Affinity Designer is an Illustrator alternative, Affinity Photo is their Photoshop competitor and Affinity Publisher is an InDesign clone. The company that makes the Affinity products is called Serif. Hope this helps to clarify.
Just like Photoshop it has multiple softwares, Affinity is the brand name. It has a rastor program and and vector program, as well as a third software I think is like light room
Your use of > rather than ≥ correctly indicates that Affinity is not a Photoshop alternative at all (going by other comments about how it's not even available on Linux).
there's a popular free image editing program called GIMP (judging by the post id assume it's probably also open-source). Anyways, if you Google "GIMP" you'll probably see a lot of pictures of leather.
Free (as in freedom) software bares the stipulation that if you use it, it must remain free. The criteria for being free are 1. You may view the source code. 2. You may edit the source code. 3. You may distribute the source code. 4. You may distribute the modifications to the source code. If you use the software the freedoms given to you are to be payed forward to all subsequent people who use it.
Open source only says you can see the source code, but it can be used in any closed sources or proprietary program.
In short. Free software is about ethics. Open Source software is about pragmatics (or so some may claim)
Not personally but it's been done with mixed results. Usually the application on it's own is stable but doesn't work with plugins and who knows about it's integration with USB control and MIDI devices. Depending on your setup latency can be a significant issue and vm can introduce quite a lot. Reaper is my DAW of choice for Linux but Ableton Live is what I enjoy most and make the best stuff in. I don't need a powerful machine for what I do with it though so an old laptop has always sufficed, which works out anyway because I don't care as much if it gets damaged or stolen etc. Just wish I could be a full time linuxbro :(
Free open source software. Basically, it's free, and you can see and use the code to your liking and even contribute to it. Good for communities, not good for companies failing to produce a similar product with notably better functions.