Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, now coming in its new 4th ‘incarnation’ is a default for many photographers worldwide. And there is a reason behind it, it is a great and easy to use application.

I have been using Lightroom since the beginning (and Photoshop before Lightroom), and I found it to be a great tool for me as a photographer.

As those of you who know me personally know, I am not a fan of Windows (nor Mac), and I am a massive fan of Linux. I have been a massive fan of Linux for many years and I have used it for many years. However, what I kept struggling with was how to run Adobe software on Linux. I have been a fan of Adobe software even before I became an Adobe Certified Expert and Instructor and for many years I would run Linux and Windows (unfortunately) as a dual-boot on my laptops.

What I recently discovered (well I didn’t really discover it recently but it actually hit me recently) was that I could run Windows virtually on my Linux. This was a solution to me! I could work on my favourite operating system – the best operating system ever – and run Adobe software like Lightroom or Photoshop in a ‘box’. Woow! What an amazing idea! There is a rumour online that Adobe plans to port their Creative Suite to Linux… That would be amazing! And they could create their own Linux distribution and sell it with Creative Suite! Is it something they’re going to do? Maybe… Who knows….

Back to my ‘virtual’ Lightroom. One of the many benefits of running a virtual operating system is that it runs on top of your operating system in a ‘box’.

• you can run as many virtual operating systems as you want,
• it doesn’t touch your existing operating system, so if anything happens to your virtual OS, that’s fine
• if your virtual OS gets a virus (Windows), you just remove it from your virtual box. As simple as that!

The way I work is I only use my virtual box for Adobe software. Anything else is being done within my Linux: LibreOffice for office suite, Firefox for web, Thunderbird for email etc.

So, let me share with you a video I created that shows how I run Lightroom virtually on Linux – I’m using Kubuntu Linux.

Enjoy and any questions, just let me know: