Photoshop is not officially supported on Linux and native versions of the app have never been released on the open-source platform. People have managed to get older releases up and running but new editions, those that require Adobe's Creative Cloud, have been locked to macOS or Windows... till now. An ingenious developer has figured out how to make those installers work through a few simple tweaks.
Whenever you try to install Photoshop 2021 or 2025 on Linux, the installer fails because it relies on a lot of Windows dependencies that Wine simply can't emulate. To be clear, Wine is a translation layer, not emulation, so it can't provide everything. This is where developer "PhialsBasement" comes in, who posted their discovery on the r/linux_gaming subreddit.
The dev published a set of patches that target deep compatibility issues pertaining to MSHTML and MSXML3: two core Windows subsystems that handle HTML and JavaScript rendering in the installer UI, along with parsing the XML config files. The patch wraps data in CDATA to bypass strict parsing on Linux, and corrects Wine's ID handling so calls reach the OS properly.
The goal is to emulate Internet Explorer-9 style behavior and environment, since that's what Adobe CC-era installers expect. The patch, therefore, also forces Wine to emulate IE9's event handling, so the UI can function as expected. With everything fixed, PhialsBasement shows that Photoshop 2021 installs and "runs butter smooth" — same goes for Photoshop 2025.
These fixes were submitted as a pull request to Valve's Wine repository, as part of Proton, but they were rejected with a push (no pun intended) to submit them to the official WineHQ project first. The developer argued it's slower to get the patch merged upstream and that Valve's fork moves faster, but considering how this isn't gaming-related, it probably would've never gotten approved with Valve.
Anyhow, this marks a major breakthrough toward Adobe CC compatibility on Linux, something that has driven away many professionals from even trying the OS. If PhialsBasement's fixes are implemented platform-wide, it could signal a new era where Photoshop and perhaps even other Adobe CC apps can run natively on Linux.
For now, though, you'd have to manually build a patched version of Wine from the dev's GitHub in order to use the installer on a regular system. If you'd rather not do all that, then Windows apps can still work just fine inside a virtual machine on Linux, if you're really dedicated to that open-source lifestyle.
Stay On the Cutting Edge: Get the Tom's Hardware Newsletter Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors
Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News, or add us as a preferred source, to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds.