Is this an option to get creative cloud apps like photoshop running on Linux. I have a friend for whom this is the cough bottleneck to switching over.

In all honesty, trying to shoehorn the CC apps to run on Linux just isn't a viable solution. As someone that does a ton of photo and video stuff it was a sticking point for me for quite awhile as well. Luckily, I don't make my living from my photography, so I was finally able to just dive head first into the open-source tools to start figuring out a new workflow.