So, you want to have Photoshop CS2 on Ubuntu?

I spent hours following various directions posted on the net (for WINE / Crossover) to no avail. And frankly, got very annoyed by the constant hardware/software errors and hangs and impossibly long install time, plus the ridiculously lengthy plug-in and preset scans on startup.

In the end I decided on a completely different approach… and so far I am very happy with it.

I installed a copy of Windows in my VMware Workstation (on my XP) and installed all my Adobe graphics applications on it. (I have several other VM’s on a Fat32 drive mounted on both XP and Ubuntu (dual boot). (remember to install vmware tools)
I then use this Virtual XP from my Ubuntu with VMware Player.
sudo apt-get install vmware-player

You can then open VMware Player from your “Systems Tools” menu and navigate to where your Virtual machine is…
When you first start it just agree to the device changes, and select to keep the key.
Set the Preferences in your VMware Player
“Close Behaviour” = ” Suspend”

You can then create a launcher for your Virtual machine… use this command to launch it in full screen (replacing location with your own):
vmplayer -X “/media/VMware/VirtualPC/xp/Windows XP Professional.vmx”

So… now that I have that setup… and I leave my CS2 maximized (hide windows taskbar if you wish) and the VMware Player starts full screen… I get CS2 full screen straight away… with a start up time of about 7-9 seconds from icon click to CS2 operational… I think that’s quicker than in my normal XP use :) :)

To make this more usable… You will need to enable some samba shares in your ubuntu. I suggest you share your work directories where you keep your graphics etc…
Then mount those as network disks in the guest XP… and use TweakUI in XP to add those drives in the “common dialog” so when you click save in CS2 you can select which folder (network share) you want to save to…

If you have a dual screen setup like I do… and have VMware tools installed in the guest… you will be able to work in your Linux on the other screen… without any switching.

sweet… (at least I’m happy…)

I suppose you can probably do this even easier somehow (in regard to the shares etc) if you have VMware Workstation in your Linux and you can configure your shares from there like you can in windows (don’t know, because I don’t have it…)

and… I suppose this method is no good for you if you don’t have much RAM to spare… as you will have to share it between Host Linux, Guest Windows and then Photoshop… :) :)