Adobe Photoshop spotted running on Linux with a Windows compatibility layer fix — Creative Cloud's most killer apps could escape Microsoft and Apple exclusivity

Adobe's world-famous Photoshop and other parts of its larger Creative Cloud suite are starting to function on Linux distributions via tweaks to the WINE compatibility layer. Curiously enough, developer "Phiality" initially has a GitHub pull request for Valve's fork of WINE in mind, built for its Proton layer in SteamOS and hardware like the well-loved Steam Deck gaming handheld (via Reddit).

Essentially, this means that Steam, the PC gaming launcher and storefront, makes it easier for Adobe users to work around an incompatibility roadblock and extend their workflow to Linux, rather than falling back on Windows 11 or macOS. Right now, this is extremely unofficial and has no involvement from Valve, and can be done without Steam at all, but it shows promise nonetheless.

Phiality's contributions to WINE target incompatibilities with Windows-centric 'mshtml' and 'msxml3' dependencies and core services that, at least so far, have hampered the ability to use Adobe's apps on Linux outside of a virtual machine. Now, the Creative Cloud appears to run with the latest release and has been tested "with Photoshop 2021 and 2025."

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It sounds like a small hurdle, but overcoming issues where Adobe's installer expects missing parts of Microsoft's OS could open the floodgates to a wide variety of its apps running closer to natively on Linux. It's a big reason for keeping some users, including myself, in a dual-boot setup with Windows 11, and certain professions still demand the use of its Creative Cloud over any alternatives.

That might not be the case forever, as more users in creative fields are seemingly choosing artificial intelligence and generative AI models for visual work. Adobe's share price is already falling, and software-as-a-service in general is struggling to compete with the convenience and near-undetectable results of tools like Google's Nano Banana Pro, overtaking even ChatGPT's DALL-E.

Still, more platform choices for Photoshop only benefit the average consumer — Windows 11 is still my primary operating system, but Linux played a bigger role in my life throughout 2025 and remains a convenient (and free) alternative when I need it. While alternatives like GIMP and Krita offer native image editing software for Linux, Adobe still holds an undeniable advantage in the industry, and I'll be watching this development with a keen eye.

Do you use any of Adobe's Creative Cloud apps? Or have you already found an alternative that works for you? Let me know in the comments to give me an idea of how mainstream Photoshop is in 2026.

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