I switched fully to Linux back in December after having kept a single windows machine around for Topaz for a few years.
I am still on the yearly Topaz subscription, but I currently get nothing out of it, not sure how long i’ll keep that going now.
The only program I need that does not work on Linux is the Topaz suite of programs, even the msi installer won’t complete due to crash in their custom dll for downloading models. And copying over pre-installed files from my old windows drive unfortunately does not quite work, but almost.
Please, please, please try to make an effort to make Topaz available on Linux. Linux is on an upwards trend with people trying to get away from the increasingly bloated Win11.
Installation alternatives:
- Flatpak: Best
- Appimage: Second Best
- Distro-specific packages: Can get a bit ugly from a support perspective if not supporting multiple popular distros (Ubuntu, Fedora, etc), but OK.
- Installer and Topaz app tested and fixed to work under Wine: Not ideal, but acceptable.
Bonus on Linux: ROCm on Linux is much more feature complete and can run most CUDA software with a recompile (unfortunately often costs a bit more VRAM).
Some details (a rant about the installer really):
When running the MSI installer, the custom .dll that handles downloading models is crashing. This was also a problem for me on occasion on Windows 10 due to Topaz repeatedly targeting the very latest runtimes when compiling, thus enforcing a need of rebooting for windows updates with less than a month after the update was made available (sometimes the update was even held back as they release them in stages). Wine is trailing behind the windows updates, and thus it doesn’t work there either, and it can take a long while before it does. But the interesting thing is that there is zero need for Topaz to actually target the very latest runtimes, they could very nicely have targeted the 2022 runtimes and it would be much more compatible with both outdated Windows and with Wine. Especially with the custom downloader dll there is no speed incentive from using newer compilers/runtimes.
In particular the installer should be backwards compatible with older windows/runtimes, and then if needed, the installer should bundle any newer runtimes needed to actually run Topaz, or at the very least have a check for runtimes, and request that the user downloads and installs specific needed runtimes if missing.
(I have made installers that reached hundreds of thousands of people, so I am speaking from personal experience. It is a big job to ensure it runs smoothly on various platforms, but I took pride in providing just that.)
