2025-03-13

Apple to Linux Journal - Can I replace Affinity Publisher with Scribus?

First, I'm just going to say, I adore the Affinity suite of apps. Publisher and Designer in particular are two of my most used apps on the iPad. Affordable one-time purchases rather than subscriptions, regularly updated, stable and fully featured, these apps have been key to working from an iPad. And I expect I'll continue working with them for the forseeable future as I expect the M2 iPad Pro easily has another 5 years of use. All that said, as I've begun to shift my time over to Linux I'm going to be actively looking for the apps I may want to switch to in the future or begin incorporating into my workflow now. I want to know ahead of time that yes, this app is actually something I'll be able to depend on when the time comes. In searching for Linux apps in the category of desktop publishing Scribus seems to be the most likely, possibly only option. I didn't see any others.

I installed it a couple days ago and as I've just finished one of my regular quartely newsletters for a client I copied all of the assets and final pdf over to LinuxMac and am now in the process of setting up the document in Scribus. It's a small, easy project to use as a test case and also my introduction to using the app.

Lot's of learnin' going on. After several hours of use my initial impression was: this is an app with the features I need but boy is it a pain in the ass to use. For comparison, the switch to the Affinity suite of apps from Adobe apps was a breeze primarily because the apps share similar UX language. Mainly, a palette of tools that make up the left side of the window and corresponding tool options along the top that change based on the current tool in use. And both offer right-side panel for various easy-to-access essential features such as layers, colors, layer effects, etc. It's all right there on each side of an open document. So I was coming from years of using Adobe apps and familiar tool bars to the Affinity apps with close enough UX layout that I was able to easily deal with the differences.

On Scribus? NOPE, nope, nope. My first impression: Scribus feels like it's rooted in word processing with a toolbar above the document window and that's it. Access to the many needed tools are only accessible via floating palettes that occupy way too much space on a small-to-medium display. Almost all the tools and options are available but the effort required to keep palette windows organized adds a lot of friction. That's on a 15" screen. It would likely be less of an issue on a 27" display. That said, I've used the app around 6 hours and I expect I'll sort out better ways to arrange the workspace as I use it longer but I'm doubtfull it could ever be as space or time efficient as the docked, ever present panels of Affinity.

A few complaints after the first six hours:

• One notable issue I'm having: no dark mode. Due to a health issue that developed a couple years ago I have difficulty using bright screens so I use dark mode full time. The current version of Scribus does not have a functional darkmode though it is reported to be in the next version. Apparently there is a darkmode in the current version but it does not work for everyone and isn't working for me.
• A bug, perhaps related to the above, the icons in the main toolbar are way too faint. I'm guessing a bug because my system is set to dark mode.
• Thus far working with Tables is proving to be the worst part of the experience. UGH. It's painful, truly.. It works but feels half-baked. Creating the table is easy. Adding or deleting rows and columns is easy. But working with text in the table is a nightmare. It's not possible to select text across multiple cells and change text attributes or the text style. Instead the user has to go into each cell and change it manually. Got a table with a lot of cells and decide you have to make a change? Yikes. A partial solution would be to set a paragraph/character style for the text going into a table. If changes need to be made then just edit the style. That's what I did but found that upon changing the size of my text in the style only affected some of the text in the table. Many cells with the style refused to change to the updated style. Also worth noting, I don't see an option to set the vertical position of text in the style. Text aligns to the top by default so the best option here would seem to be to remember to set the text to middle vertical align as it is entered into each cell.
• Layers? I'm used to having layers in Affinity Publisher where any new object is treated as a new layer on a page. There is a layers palette in Scribus but every new object is just a part of the default background layer. I'll have to rethink my understanding and use of layers in this app. In my limited use thus far it seems like it's more akin to Apple's Pages app in that the order of objects in the background layer can be rearranged but they're not visually represented as layers in a visible palette.
• On Affinity, I can select text, copy then paste the style on other text. Big time saver.
• Working with color is so slow. In every app I've used other than Scribus changing the color of text or a vector object involves tapping a color tool which presents a color wheel or some other color tool. It allows for easy click selection of a color to apply. Not so with Scribus which has a very small selection of predefined colors. Want to use a different color? Go to the edit menu and select Colors and fills and add a color to the palette. It's not just an extra click to get there but also requires that you create a name for the new color. Once saved it will appear in the document's color palette. There's no option to select a color from an object on the screen. Perhaps this is one of those things that becomes easier over time but it seems more convoluted.

As I continue to write I'm in my second day of use, I'm now at about 9 hours and I'll admit, it IS getting a bit easier. My initial impression that all the same tools and features one expects are here, but getting to them to use or change does seem to require more effort. But, again, this could just be my lack of experience. I think it's fair to say that there is a higher learning curve here. This is an app that I won't learn by just doing. It's forcing me to do a lot of searching online to find things. I don't think there's a downloadable manual but there is an online how-to wik. I wish I'd started there. I'm remembering now what it's like to start with a powerful, complex app for the first time. A learning curve is to be expected. From past experience I know that the tools are, I know what I need to do, but now I need to re-learn where they are, how they are adjusted, and if they might labeled differently.

Also, worth noting, another significant difference are the Document set-up options. All the basic and expected options are there: Document size, margins, bleed, etc. But there's far more that can be set-up for each document! Set-up for each document essentially offers the same settings screen that one gets with the app itself and it's far more detailed than what is offered in Affinity Publisher. So, for example, I can set the default font and various font attributes in the app settings. If I don't bother with the that option in the document set-up the document will inherit the setting. Same for various other palettes/options. In other words, it helps to pay close attention. I can set various shape and image options in advance in the app and in each document. It's absolutely something to pay attention to when getting started.

I expect I could go on writing this for days as I continue to learn the details. Instead I'll publish this as a first impression and revisit at some point once I've actually become familiar with the app. It's only with that kind of familiarity that I can comment on whether or not the friction persists beyond the learning phase. I'll conclude by saying that my first day's impressions were mostly correct. Scribus is a fully featured, fully capable app. It seems very likely that it can be a replacement for Affinity Publisher and Adobe InDesign. But it's not the kind of app I'm going to learn just by doing. If ever there was an app that benefited from a user manual, this is it.

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