Now the Affinity suite is free. This doesn’t mean I’ll give up Krita, but programs like Inkscape and Scribus will probably take a backseat in my workflow. Although, when I’m on Linux, I won’t be able to use Affinity natively. Do you intend to adopt Affinity or let it adopt you?
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Affinity is just weak (extremely weak) in term of drawing and painting. That’s it.
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Since I’m a painter there’s nothing that Affinity has to offer for me. My husband already was a regular Affinity user and was kinda surprised that it was announced to be free now and he thinks it’s a bad sign since he also doesn’t trust the company that bought them recently. Of course he’s happy to not pay for new versions anymore but he suspects more is about to happen that will make it worse again, based on experiences with other major players in creative software in recent years.
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What could this bad sign be?
As far as I know, it seems that the software itself is free, but additional AI services are charged.
Recently most software that gone free and not open source changed to monetizing the users instead. As people often say: If you don’t have to pay, you are the product. And recently this was often the first step to enshitification.
As a graphic designer I have been using Affinity for years now. It is great software and fits my needs. To have it free now is a good thing for designers and illustrators. I do not rate it for pure raster painting regarding workflow and brushes, but it is very good in a hybrid workflow of vector and raster, and the typography options are very good too. So if you want to create a logo or illustration for a very specific size and want to integrate it in your design, it is the best option.
Add to that, that it is very easy to export to various formats and sizes and is very good in a non-destructive workflow with filters and adjustments and it is a very good tool in a production environment that requires speed and flexibility.
Krita offers many of these things, but also lacks things like proper typography options, and the non-destructive workflow is much more laggy. What Krita also does not offer is optimization for large canvas sizes. In Affinity, I can create a 10000 x 10000 pixel file and paint with a 1000 pixel brush. Krita will just stutter and crash if I try…
No software is perfect, but use them for their strengths and it can be very powerful.
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Well, I’m aware that Affnity isn’t great for painting, but considering I worked with PS 5.5 for 15 years, I think anything is possible 
As for AI, and paying for it in Affnity, even though what AI can do is incredible (as seen in the latest PS update), it’s not something that interests me for my workflow. However, for those who need AI, paying for AI is just another example of reality being thrown in their face.
A guy here in Brazil made a tutorial video on how to run the new Affnity on a Linux distro (using the Bottles app). From what little can be seen, it’s running OK.
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I will tey it out but i will be sure to add it to the firewall then so it cant talk back home.
For me I can’t trust a company to hand something over for free and become their product that they try and capitalize on and once that model has lost its usefulness they pull the rug out from under you and bam go subscription. So for me I don’t plan on anything Affinity, Adobe or any other company wanting to make us their product and incorporate us into their AI garbage.
And, to be honest, I mistrust them from the bottom of my heart. 