Linux lacks native versions of industry-grade creative tools like Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, and while open-source options are capable, not everyone is willing to relearn and adapt to different tools.
Thankfully, the gap in commercial design software is plugged with workarounds involving Wine, the Windows compatibility layer – which is how you can run Affinity v3 on Linux.
Affinity, acquired by Canva in 2024, moved to a freemium model in 2025. Photo, Designer and Publisher tools were merged into a unified app and made free to download and use on Windows and macOS (generative AI features cost, but are optional).
Canva has said it the request for a native Linux build is something it’s taking seriously.
But until it actions the request with something tangible, the community has stepped into make it easy to use the latest version of Affinity on Linux desktops, complete with GPU acceleration.
AffinityOnLinux: Run Affinity Easily
The Linux Affinity Installer project (AffinityOnLinux) makes it easier to use the software. There are two ways to use it: via a regular installation (using Wine you install yourself) or via an AppImage (which contains everything you need).
As the project GitHub wiki lists all Ubuntu-based distros as “unsupported”, if you use Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Zorin OS et al you can use the AppImage (it’s what I used when taking screenshots for this article).
What you lose in disk space (assuming you have Wine installed) you gain in time by opting to use the AppImage: no hassle; no fighting with Wine configs and prefixes, no needing to check logs for missing libraries and go and install them.
It bundles the Windows version of Affinity v3 into a self-contained AppImage alongside a preconfigured Wine install. You download it, mark it executable, and run – that’s it. A DPI slider appears the first time you run the AppImage to let you set adjust UI scaling.
But while the AppImage includes most dependencies and should “just work”, they lack automatic updates, don’t integrate cleanly with the underlying system the way a normal install will, and it can be necessary to do manual fixes or configuration.
Hardware acceleration can require additional setup or dependencies for NVIDIA dGPUs, but runs on iGPUs well; there is a known memory bug that occurs under specific circumstances; and some system dialogs and prompts may not appear.
More details on the Github, along with download links to the latest release. Note: it’s only available for 64-bit Intel/AMD systems, not ARM.
Would you like to see Canva bring Affinity to Linux officially, even as a Wine wrapper? Or would you prefer more effort to go into making FOSS tools like Krita, Inkscape and GIMP? Let me know in the comments.