At the Ubuntu Developer Summit, which took place last week, it was announced that the next release of the Ubuntu Linux distribution, version 10.04, will no longer carry the GIMP in its default installation. This actually touches upon somethin I’ve been wanting to talk about, a problem that plagues both Linux and Mac OS X: Paint.NET is Windows-only.
The reasoning behind removing the GIMP from the default Ubuntu install is solid. The application is geared towards a different audience than Ubuntu itself; it’s for technical and skilled high-end graphic editors. This makes it unsuitable for quick image editing, because thanks to all its plug-ins, the GIMP’s loading time is long. To make matters worse, because the GIMP is a complicated and advanced application, its interface reflects that.
As a result, it seems to make little sense to include the GIMP in the default installation of Ubuntu. An additional benefit here is that this decision frees up quite a lot of space on the single-CD Ubuntu always aims to ship on.
The reaction from within the GIMP community is one of approval. “That is pretty much in-line with our product vision,” writes GIMP developer Sven Neumann, “GIMP is a high-end application for professionals. It is not the tool that you would advise every user to use for their casual photo editing.”
So, what other tool will provide the ability to perform the type of casual photo editing Neumann speaks of? This role will be fulfilled by F-Spot, the photo management tool. This one already has several quite basic photo editing tools built-in, such as red-eye reduction and cropping.
One of the hurdles with using F-Spot was that its editing features were only available in the application’s “full” mode, or management mode, instead of its light “view” mode. The former takes quite a while to load up, so wasn’t an ideal solution. Luckily, F-Spot developer Stephane Delcroix added the editing tools to the view mode within mere hours of hearing of Ubuntu’s plans to remove the GIMP.
While this is all well and fine, this still leaves the default Ubuntu installation without any method of creating images. Mac OS X suffers from the same lack of a good but accessible image manipulation program that sits somewhere between MS Paint and Photoshop in terms of features and complexity.
I have an applications superstar tag-team, consisting of Chrome for Windows, Miranda IM, and, here we go, Paint.NET. Paint.NET perfectly balances itself between the overly simplistic nature of MS Paint and the complexity extravaganza of things like Photoshop and the GIMP. It provides most of the tools you need not only to edit photos, but also to actually create graphics.
This is an area where both Linux and Mac OS X lag behind Windows. There simply is no Paint.NET equivalent in the Linux and Mac OS X world – you are either restricted to simple and basic MS Paint-like things, or the overwhelming nature of things like Photoshop or the GIMP.
I see this as a genuine niche that needs to be filled on these two platforms, and every time I try to stick to them full-time, I eventually hit a wall whenever I need to do some quick image creating. Ubuntu removing the GIMP and relying on F-Spot instead is a symptom of this problem – not a solution.
Maybe this will help bring some attention to the mono port of Paint.net at: http://code.google.com/p/paint-mono/
I doubt that port is up to date – the code of paint.net for the past year has not been released under an open licence since the author was fed up of it being “abused” by people trying either to make a quick buck or using it as a bandwaggon to install malware.
I’ve seen this…
Micro Center (a nearby chain store that despite being a chain store is generally known for savvy employees) was selling “commercial” copies of paint.net for $20. The small print for these copies said that “free bonus software” would be included in the instillation of Paint.NET.
If you look over the code it is so specific to the windows platform it would require a complete rewrite to work on any other platform.
great program though.
the GIMP needs work, oh well, better than TuxPaint
What?
http://code.google.com/p/paint-mono/
It’s more-or-less already been ported to mono.
Granted, it still uses the mono WinForms implementation
Edit: Obviously I missed the very first comment on this thread
Edited 2009-11-25 19:15 UTC
i call it the GetsuedForms implementation
http://www.nathive.org/ is shaping up to be a good solution for Gnome.
Krita is great for KDE (although maybe too professional)
Photoshop and Aviary work also great as flash web apps on all platforms.
BTW: I think the Mono project has really failed because great FOSS apps like paint.net have not made their way to Linux.
explain how someone choosing not to port to another platform is a mono fail?
Because, while pretending to offer a platform for transparent software portability, it is not only incapable of running mostly any generic .NET program out there, but has also proved to be incapable of providing a platform where a few, selected programs could be easily recompiled and ported.
No Paint.net; no Sharp Studio; and never, ever found a web site that ran using Moonlight (not even the example sites pointed at by Moonlight’s own site. As for a platform for development in Linux, it may be nice, but really, the only meaningful programs using it so far are F-Spot, which I find to be useless, Banshee, which is not a lot better than Rhythmbox, and Tomboy, which while nice is not exactly a power app.
To wrap up, not a whole lot of promise, and even less fulfillment.
Try not putting words in the mouth of the Mono team and reevaluating. They never said it was meant to provide platform transparency. That is a made up goal of the Mono haters.
http://www.mono-project.com/Main_Page
And where in any of that does it say anything close to what you said?
What do you think it was that I said?
What I provided was links to what the Mono Project itself thinks it’s purpose is. There was not one word of my post that can be seen as “putting words in the mouth of the Mono team” … because all the words came from the Mono team.
My own observation would be only that there are quite a few mentions of “cross-platform” right there on the Mono Project home page.
Edited 2009-11-30 00:00 UTC
I do not agree. That is not a replacement for Gimp or close to Paint.NET. Tuxpaint is a more serious and useful paint application. I hope the Gnome mentality has not gripped that project or all we can expect is a MSPaint clone.
MSPaint is not a photo or paint application, it is a joke and should not be emulated. Gimp may be overkill and too difficult to use, but under delivering (notepad, mspaint, cmd, IE, etc) is worse. Something like Paint.NET is very close to ideal.
If you meant that it is working toward the feature set of Paint.NET and will be ideal when it reaches that point then yes, I agree, that would be nice.
Agreed, GIMP is too complex – but it has all what it needs to implement paint. So why not implement a simple GUI for GIMP, and ship both?
Mac only atm.
http://seashore.sourceforge.net/
I wonder how tractable it would be to port this to GNUstep. GNUstep does aim for Cocoa compatibility.
Why would such a project not include a screenshot of the application on the project page?
Because you are blind?
http://seashore.sourceforge.net/screenshot.php
Yes, as Photoshop Elements is to Photoshop, someone could dumb down GIMP. They could probably fix the GIMP interface while they’re at it.
Right now, Picasa is good for the average user, even though it uses WINE. It doesn’t break like F-Spot and it has some clever features such as Collage.
I agree. I know there used to be gimpshop, which made a photoshop interface for gimp, so I am sure it can’t be too hard, at least not any harder than making paint.net work in Linux.
Further, does Paint.NET have the hidden features that gimp does, like having 16-bit color channels, raw support, and so on?
Well… because it sucks.
The creators claim it is high end graphics programme… but the only people who ever use it makes sites like this:
http://gimp-savvy.com/ABOUT/index.html
Which makes me question whether the users of gimp actually know what high-end is.
Just look at the section entitled ‘The Construction of Gimp-Savvy.com’
Talk about geek heaven…
They claim on this page that they want to…
‘…promote its skillful and knowledgeable use. The GIMP is a premiere image editing and painting program rivaling any commercial package’…
Yeah, if their site is eveidence of ‘skillful and knowledgeable use’ of a ‘premiere image editing and painting program’ that can rival any ‘commercial package’, I can see why those involved in high-end graphics choose Adobe software.
Edited 2009-11-26 16:10 UTC
Please note that that website and book were created over 9 years ago. I don’t think it’s ever been updated.
Thanks for the info, but I stand by what I say. Really, maybe you have seen something different but the only people I have ever seen who use gimp or say they are designers and make web sites using gimp make sites like that, even sites made in the last year or two.
I think a linux users idea of what high-end constitutes and what adobe users think high-end is are two completely different things.
“Thanks for the info, but I stand by what I say.”
Right, because you’re not really interested in constructive debate, but would rather just be bashing free software.
Gimp is indeed quite powerful (and yes, I use Photoshop in a professional context). The interface is being fixed in the next version with the new single-window mode, and other “pro” features are planned.
But why miss a good occasion to dump on people creating (and using) Free Software, right?
Wrong.
It sucks because of people like you who can’t accept certain realities. Jeez, even aviary is better and that’s an online app.
…where “reality” as defined by you is the only correct one?
Or like this:
http://www.digitalrecovery.co.nz
Maybe you should do a girl’s look next time. I’m a freelance web & logo designer, and I work exclusively in Linux. I consider my work to be “high end”—if by which you mean “professional level”. GIMP serves me ably.
I have to say I’m not surprised by Ubuntu devs making such a decision, since they follow GNOME in it’s cutting features mentality hoping it makes things more simple.
If you think The GIMP is so complex for an average user, customise it so it’s not. The great the about The GIMP is that you can customise it’s tool panels. Why not just simplify them in a default way?
As for loading time, well only first run does it take longer to load because of the plugins, after then it loads up as fast as Firefox.
Personally, I think it’s a wrong decision for all the wrong reasons. This doesn’t show maturity, it shows lack of vision and testing.
If you are able to create a simplified version of Gimp please do it, because it seems that nobody is interested or have the ability to do so.
Just customizing panels won’t fix the several user interface annoyances and excess of unnecessary functionality to basic users.
You mean like Adobe Photoshop on the Mac? That’s pretty much GIMP’s way, yet people use it all the time.
You can show what options you pretty much like on a customise UI setup, find one, save it and use it as the default. on start up for Ubuntu.
I never use the default layout but why not customise the layout for the default? It’s easy to do.
Edited 2009-11-25 18:46 UTC
Yes, but Photoshop is aimed at a very different demographic than Ubuntu.
Photoshop is aimed at professional users, who are more likely to see beyond the UI. That’s not to say that Ubuntu users can’t see beyond the UI, but if you are a professional and you have to use Photoshop, you will do so regardless of the UI.
Anyway, the GIMP is still on the repos so it’s not that big a deal. And since the free space will lead to more consumer oriented packages in the standard install I consider it a good thing.
maybe because code for unneeded (then, unused) functionality taking space on the user’s hd is the very definition of bloat, and a simpler gui wouldn’t by itself remove it, but just omit to expose it instead?
having to install a full featured image manipulation framework (even with a dumbed down ui) when one just needs (say) crop, resize and maybe red eye removal, is like having to have the full blown java or .net just to run a hello world application …
Hope I’m not taking this out of context, but this is where I use gThumb.
That sounds much like Firefox itself, alright. Unfortunately, Firefox’s load time isn’t something to brag about on my machine. This is the niche Chrome fills.
Really? gpaint seems to fill the niche you describe, more powerful than “paint” but less complex than The GIMP. It could use a UI update, but most of the functionality seems there.
Without any Undo functionality, it’s quite useless, IMO.
GPaint is ancient and last I knew still used GTK1. Hardly a replacement! XPaint is more powerful and looks just as nice.
Why not include picasa for linux beta, yea it’s beta but so is Grub2 and they used it. I think everyone forgets this program even exists, it’s cross platform and works great…
Edited 2009-11-25 18:41 UTC
demands Wine because it’s a windows program
I find Picasa to be totally brilliant, in Windows, but it’s integration in Linux is less than stellar. Bad fonts, bad file chooser, etcetera. Still a must have for me, because it coexists peacefully with the Win version in the XP installation my boyfriend uses, and it does a lot of things a lot better than the available native programs.
Oh, and only free-as-in-beer, which grinds badly with the general philosophy of a Linux distribution.
I think Krita from the Koffice Project has the chance being the “Paint.NET” under Linux and (later) OS X.
It has some good features and a good user interface.
Its not complete yet and still does not have all the features paint.net has but its quite good.
Krita is a KDE app and including it would pull quite a lot of dependencies that would take even more space in the live cd than The GIMP.
Krita brings in way, way less dependencies on a KDE desktop than Paint.NET would bring in on a GTK+ – based desktop.
You are comparing apples and oranges here. Have a fair comparison and ask how many dependencies would Krita bring in to a GTK+ desktop?
The article is about the default Ubuntu install, not Kubuntu or KDE in general. Including Krita on the default Ubuntu install would pull in all of kdelibs, which have a bigger disk footprint then mono. Not too mention running Krita in Gnome would mean having to load kdelibs into RAM just for one app, thus making memory usage substantially higher and slowing startup time considerably.
Well, then someone needs to develop an application in GTK and with Gnome technology that does what Krita, or even just Kolourpaint. The fact that that isn’t happening means that Ubuntu simply won’t have any useful applications unless people either pull their fingers out or stop getting anal about dependencies.
Edited 2009-11-25 23:14 UTC
You are not comparing like with like.
KDE libs is the equivalent of GNOME libs.
GTK+ libs are included by both KDE and GNOME.
Qt libs are the equivalent of Mono.
The KDE set of dependencies is lighter than the GNOME set (if you include Mono apps with GNOME).
If you want a lighter desktop with more functionality and less dependencies, you start with KDE + Qt, not GNOME + Mono.
QT + KDELibs is smaller than Mono. Mono runtime is insanely heavy and get heavier as they add more emulation for items like winforms. GTK+ is not used inside KDE applications themselves. Gobject from glib is for sound in places it makes sence. Diskfoot print QT+KDELibs wins.
Mono also has a major memory issue for a Livecd. Mono supporters love overlooking it makes loading kdelibs into memory for 1 app look painless. Mono is not prebuild. Application and data are all allocated in memory that has to go to swap when out of memory. Guess what Livecd no swap. So mono is binding up memory in a way that cannot be released.
Using QT+KDElib since the applications are built as true binaries all the application data like kdelibs are file maps to memory in case of memory stress can be removed from ram. So yes kdelibs applications could be slow from a live cd having to swap items in and out of memory. But important issue is they can swap parts in and out of memory where mono really cannot. So KDELibs is more compatible with a livecd when memory stressed.
Dumping and rebuilding the x86/processor code over and over again is going to cost way more time than using QT+KDElibs. Its not a solvable problem unless you build mono programs as native. But then due to mono design native programs are huge.
Yep KDELibs wins in the ram department.
Ie if you are argueing about ram usage pure native GTK applications on a Gnome system is the best QT+KDElibs is the second best. Items like Java and Mono are last.
QT is not Mono. QT is a low level lib that where able keeps it stacking shallow. Mono sits on a stack of stuff then puts emulation on top again.
Next big thing is most Native binaries on Linux are bloated. Purely due to gcc. When you link .o files into a program optimization between the .o files don’t happen. Gcc 4.5 that should be out before the next ubuntu will enable optimizations to go across the .o splits. So freeing up more disk space.
Please don’t forget Mono need to have a compiler in memory all the time. Losing hand over fist all the way along with mono. Less applications that install simply and worse usage of resources at hand.
At this point I think you are willfully ignoring the topic of the original story. The story is about Ubuntu, a Gnome based distro, and their default install. It’s not about KDE based distros, even if a KDE based solution is ‘lighter’, it is completely irrelevant to the topic at hand and has NOTHING to do with Ubuntu or it’s default install which always was, and always will be Gnome based. Suggesting that they include Krita is completely unrealistic. Ubuntu will always include gnomelibs and gtklibs as part of it’s install so the only additional cost including a Paint.NET like app is the cost of mono. According to packages.ubuntu.com the installed size of mono-runtime on amd64 is 3424 kb. According to the same website kdelibs shared libraries take up 33504 kb of installed space on amd64. And that is just counting the base package and not any of the dependencies. So as you can see including Krita in the default install of Ubuntu, which is what this entire article is about, will take up an order of magnitude more space then including mono.
No get your numbers right. kdelibs is a complete runtime. That mono-runtime is missing items like libmono-corlib1.0-cil + another 2 megs there No .net program runs basically without it.
Then plus libmono-system1.0-cil There goes another 2 megs. Again no mono program is going to work without it. Does not take long a 2 megs here 2 megs there to sneek up way larger than the KDE runtime systems.
Only gets worse those things get larger in ram as they are converted into native x86 code.
Ubuntu guys are being stupid. Some of the reason they are not fitting as many applications as they use to on a Ubuntu Live CD is the leach mono eating up the space. Same with the poor performance on low end machines.
Runtime is only good enough to run the bytecode nothing more by mono. Mono runtime is fragmented. Once you have the whole Mono runtime installed to run something lot more diskspace has gone.
Mono is death by 1000 cuts. Dependencies is a good one. Failure to check out the dependency tree hides the true cost.
Really Ubuntu needs to take 1000 bloat cuts. Tomboy out for Gnote F-spot out for gthumb or equal made work correctly. Compiler work so it can build code. Go through the gnome runtime cutting it down to size. There is a lot of useless code hiding out in the gnome run-time.
We have a long time to go until the next ubuntu release. Lot of changes are going to happen in the middle that will alter all the size numbers.
Simple fact here mono is not native. Cost of not being native is painful on a livecd.
Disk space is only a small part of a livecd. How well the livecd runs is also important. Less applications better performance will get more user.
Errrrrrr, it is if you actually want Ubuntu to have applications that matter to people. That is the real topic here. Not Gnome.
We seem to be coming back to this more regularly these days. If you don’t want Ubuntu to have any useful applications in the name of ‘bloat’, or ‘disk space’, ‘memory requirements’ or ‘we don’t want our desktop polluted with other stuff’ then I’m afraid Ubuntu is even more utterly useless than it already is.
You have a very retarded notion of bloat over application functionality which many fanboys on forums seem to have – which end users simply don’t give a flying f–k about incidentally, as the cost per gigabyte amongst other things continues to come down. If you don’t get this, I recommend reading this:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000020.html
Edited 2009-11-26 11:01 UTC
I have a few machines about the place, and the oldest of them has an 80GB hard drive. The other systems all have way more storage capacity than that.
I normally allocate about 12 to 16 GB of drive space to the root “/” partition, which holds the OS. Plenty of space.
So, the only criteria that really matter to users in an application are these:
(1) performance,
(2) functionality,
(3) ease of use (or usability),
(4) stability,
(5) look and feel (including desktop integration),
(6) availability, and
(7) ease and cost of installation.
There is no issue with any of these criteria for both GTK+ and Qt applications running on a KDE4 desktop.
I have often heard it claimed that there are issues running Qt applications on a GNOME desktop. Hence the apparent reluctance of some people in this thread to install Krita as the obvious choice of paint application instead of the more complex (but more powerful and more functional) GIMP.
Well then, it seems to me that perhaps the best approach is to get rid of the GNOME/Mono desktop that is causing the whole problem in the first place.
Basically, like so:
Ctrl-Alt-F1
login as root
aptitude remove libmono* libgdiplus cli-common libsqlite0 libglitz-glx1 libglitz1
aptitude remove ubuntu-desktop
aptitude install kubuntu-desktop krita kipi-plugins digikam
aptitude install –without-recommends firefox
Ctrl-Alt-Del
It will take quite a while, but sweet.
Alternatively, and perhaps easier if you have a separate root partition and /home partition, then perhaps getting a Kubuntu 9.10 LiveCD might be easier. Boot the LiveCD, tell it to re-format your Ubuntu root partition and install Kubuntu back to that same root partition, and re-use (but do NOT re-format) your /home partition.
Edited 2009-11-26 11:39 UTC
Joel is an idiot sometimes. This is one of those times. To be fair, the article is also a bit dated. But basically my counter point boils down to the fact that hard drive performance has not kept up with the increasing bloat, which is why SSD is so hot these days. So you do pay a performance penalty with bloat. Windows 7’s preching should theoretically remove some of the penalty. I have my reservations about it, but the big reason why they did it is because it reduces the penalty for bloat. So Yeah, Bloat matters today.
It isn’t. It’s got even more relevant as the cost per storage unit has come down.
Right…….. Hard drives have increased in size because people have more stuff to store, and a computer today will still start an application faster than one five years ago. It’s a razor thin argument.
Have you got any figures you can point to that measure what you define as ‘bloat’ and the resulting performance impact?
Since you can’t actually define or back up what you mean by bloat, as many simply can’t, my point still stands. People who talk long and hard about ‘bloat’ whilst ignoring application functionality does border on being a mental illness.
Then what’s the point of pre-caching? Why is windows 7 caching everything it can?
Answer: because it makes it faster. Because Hard drives are slow loading large programs. My non scientific experience confirms that loading office 97 in 2000 on crappy hardware for the time ( 4 year old pentium 156 megs memmory 4500 rpm drive win 98), was faster than loading office 2007 on modern hardware ( core 2 2.6 ghz, 2 gb memory, win xp) is. Why? Bloat.
BTW, if you install a GNOME application on a GTK+ desktop (such as XFCE or LXDE), you bring in a whole boatload of GNOMElibs. It is even worse if you bring in a GNOME Mono application, such as Paint.NET would be.
Not too mention running Paint.NET in XFCE or LXDE would mean having to load GNOMElibs and Mono into RAM just for one app, thus making memory usage substantially higher and slowing startup time considerably.
Running Krita in XFCE or LXDE is far less expensive in terms of extra dependencies than running Paint.NET would be.
Edited 2009-11-26 01:09 UTC
Seriously dude, I know you’re a KDE developer, but this is getting ridiculous.
My point was that including lots of the KDE platform just for Krita isn’t a very good idea.
But you knew that all the way right? You just had to make your little trolling. I’m very sure the PR guys at KDE are very happy with you.
Seriously dude, I know you’re a KDE developer, but this is getting ridiculous. My point was that including lots of the KDE platform just for Krita isn’t a very good idea. But you knew that all the way right? You just had to make your little trolling. I’m very sure the PR guys at KDE are very happy with you. [/q]
As it turns out, I’m not a KDE developer, at all.
I just point out that the subject of this thread is utterly ridiculous. It suggests a .NET application instead of GIMP.
Well, OK, for many people GIMP is too complex, I’ll grant you.
But why suggest pulling in a .NET application, of all things, with its HUGE Mono dependencies, which isn’t even ported to Linux anyway, when there is a perfectly good alternative program in Krita?
From a users point of view, ignoring Krita makes utterly no sense at all.
It’s not free and leans towards photoshop than paint.net, but i find pixelmator to be an excellent app on the mac.
However for Windows paint.net is good, the only reason i don’t upgrade to it is that i’m so used to paint shop pro 7 which is lean and has the features i need. It would be good if there was something like paint.net / psp 7 for the mac and linux, the article is spot on.
As somebody else mentioned, Seashore.app shows that it’s possible to build something simpler on Gimp’s foundation.
Pixelmator seems to be quite nice on the Mac, although naturally it isn’t free.
http://www.pixelmator.com/
Pixelmator is what I use on my Mac.
It does what I need. Since my Windows Box is for pure gaming, and I do everything else on my Mac… I don’t have Photoshop installed anymore, and wasn’t about to buy a another version for the Mac.
And it regularly comes on sale for as little as 29AUD – very worthwhile purchase…
IMO the most sensible decision would be to create a light version of GIMP using only a subset of GIMP’s features.
Replacing GIMP with F-Spot will not save any space on the CD because F-Spot uses Mono, so Mono would have to be included too. If Mono is already included in the live CD then Mono should be the first thing to go.
I wish people(distros) would get over this pointless qt/gtk division. Krita does this fine, it has for quite a while. We already have a lack of free software in some areas, restricting yourself to only gtk or qt software just limits you further, and what for? Slightly more visual integration? That can be solved in other ways.
Here’s an idea, how about using the best for purpose and stop recreating the same software in different toolkits every 2 seconds. Work on the visual integration of free software as a whole rather than excluding software that uses other toolkits like it’s the plague.
It’s clear QT and GTK are both here to stay (at least for now) so let’s stop the wasted effort recreating the same things yet again.
If KOffice would be ready for general use, we could kill OpenOffice, gain some 500 MB free CD space, and create a single CD with both GNOME and KDE workspaces.
Precisely.
BTW, recent KDE desktops support GTK+ and Qt (but not Mono) applications with the same look (and often even the same feel, because many GTK+ applications can use the native KDE file picker dialog boxes etc).
The easiest way to have a mix of GTK+ and Qt applications which look integrated on the same desktop, without bloat or having a penalty of requiring additional dependencies each time you install more applications, is to start with a recent KDE4 desktop in the first place (and subsequently avoid Mono applications).
What are you talking about? Mono uses Gtk+ as its preferred GUI toolkit, unless you meant WinForms which is something else entirely. So actually yes, Mono applications get along just fine with every other Gnome application. But you were just trolling because GOD FORBID somebody use a Mono app, right lemur2?
Excuse me? WTF? What are you talking about?
Read it again:
BTW, recent KDE desktops support GTK+ and Qt (but not Mono) applications with the same look (and often even the same feel, because many GTK+ applications can use the native KDE file picker dialog boxes etc).
Recent KDE desktops support GTK+ applications and Qt applications but not Mono applications.
WTF is wrong with that statement? It is a fact, pure and simple.
Umm, well you see Mono apps written in Gtk# are GTK+ applications, and therefore integrate with KDE desktops just as well as other KDE apps. You do know the difference between language runtime (Mono) and widget toolkit (GTK+/Qt) right? Now if you say WinForms, then yes that is correct, WinForms applications are very foreign looking on a Linux desktop. However as much as you don’t like it, the fact remains that Mono/Gtk# applications integrate into a Linux system just as well as any other Gtk+ application written in any other language.
Additionally, there ARE Mono bindings for KDE/Qt known as Qyoto, which you can see for yourself here – http://techbase.kde.org/Development/Languages/Qyoto
So your snarky but not Mono at the end of your argument was uncalled for and deliberately untrue.
WTF? Are you crazy?
Recent KDE distributions do not ship with Mono libraries. They will therefore necessarily not include
any Mono applications. Period.
This does not mean that you CANNOT install and run any Mono applications, but only that, unlike GTK+ and Qt applications, Mono applications are not suported by the as-shipped configuartion of KDE distributions.
Sheesh!
BTW … since you get a perfectly functional and well-performing KDE desktop without Mono, why would you bother to install it?
Xara is perfect for drawing.
i do not want more mono apps
(i remove them after installing ubuntu)
IMHO at this moment the mono is one of the best development environmets on linux. Winforms is sit on the top of the Cairo – like GTK.
mono is a bloated patent trap with a few programs none from the windows world (cross platform?) and i have found better programs than f-spot,tomboy,banshee,
How can you know if an application is better if you don’t use Mono? You can’t possibly have compared it then.
i tried them first and they waren’t up to my standards
gimp can do most everything photoshop can do. of course it’s complicated. it’s complicated. but figuring out linux is also complicated. if you can’t figure out the gimp. should you even be using linux?
editing.
People that just want to remove red-eye should not be given 10k options.
But you’re probably one of those people that feels like a bad ass for taking 20 steps to setup your wireless with ndiswrapper instead of 5 in Windows. Bad dudez command line club.
Are you a bad enough dude for the command line?
Sorry for being off topic but this amused me.
The process in Windows 7 would be:
1) Install Windows 7 – damn the wireless doesn’t work
2) OK I’ll try the Vista driver on the manufacturers CD – Oh dear that doesn’t work.
3) OK I’ll need to use the Internet to find a Windows 7 driver, but no wireless no Internet – I’ll use Linux to get to the Internet
4) Boot on Linux Live CD or install Linux on spare partition – click the icon on the panel setup in a couple of clicks.
5) Find the site of the wireless card manufacture look for Windows 7 driver – damn they don’t have one
6) Check what chipset the wireless card uses, go to the chipset manufactures website – OK they have a beta driver for Windows 7 download.
7) Damn it a rar file – reboot in Linux and download program for uncompressing rar files
8) Reboot into Windows install rar utility
9) Install Windows 7 wireless beta driver
10) setup wireless
Yep Windows is so much easier than Linux
Nice try. I have yet to encounter a piece of hardware not supported out of the box by Windows 7.
We’re no longer in XP time.
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=%22no+driver%22+%22wi…
All it takes is to have a wireless card/chip that was out of production by the time Vista was introduced.
An XP driver would still exist for that card/chip, but those don’t work in Vista or Windows 7. If the card is no longer being sold, who is going to be bothered to write a new Vista/Windows 7 driver for it? Certainly not the OEM … they don’t sell that card/chip any more, do they? And they certainly don’t sell any OS either.
If this chip is embedded in your laptop … no new Windows with wireless for YOU!
That was easy. I didn’t even have to mention the fact that if you have a new 64-bit Windows (7 or Vista), then since Microsoft does not have control of the source code for most OEM drivers, then almost all of your CDs that came with various bits of hardware that you still have (such as your printer, scanner, camera, mobile phone and webcam) are more than likely to have only 32-bit drivers. Oops.
Now, if you happened to have an OS and a set of drivers for it where you had written all of the code, then happily you would have control of the source code. New drivers, and new 64-bit variants for drivers, are only a bit of tweaking and a re-compile away.
This same consideration about having the source code also happens to apply just as well, BTW, for a port to a new architecture such as ARM as it does to 64-bit drivers and OS.
Edited 2009-11-26 08:52 UTC
Well you’re lucky!
I installed Karmic, Haiku and Windows 7 64 bit (legal version) on the same day (new big hard drive why not) and had the worst driver problems with Windows 7.
My Wireless didn’t work a PCI card with an rt61 chipset (also didn’t work in haiku).
My sound didn’t work creative sound blaster live with a EMU10K chipset (which must be one of the most standard sound cards you could buy) this even worked in Haiku. A driver for the sound car proved to be unobtainable. I did consider hacking it to take a Vista driver but decide to fit a Genius SM-Live Vale 5.1 PCI card. This also didnt work out of the box but I did find a beta driver for the chipset which works.
So Thom if all you hardware worked out of the box your exceptionally lucky – or maybe just deeper pockets.
So what’s the procedure when a Linux distribution doesn’t have an “in-box” driver….
And you are so wrong about the procedure… its more like this…
1) mmm. wireless doesn’t work.
2) Plug your ethernet port into a router
3) Run windows update to get the driver
4) W7 PnP automatically loads driver and enables wirelss
5) unplug ethernet cable and off you go. Wireless stuff works as usual.
So, why do you need linux again? You picked the most difficult way to get a driver why?
Your scenario is setting up a Windows system from scrach (clean install) in a place with only access to wireless? Really? That happens how often?
If you are going to use an example where Linux is better than windows – at least pick something with some relevance. your example is super contrived.
Oh – your scenario is running on something so old that the wireless adapter manufacturer has dropped support for the driver? When that happens MSFT pulls the driver. You want MSFT to keep unsupported drivers in our product? really?
And just how am I supposed to plug in my ethernet card when the router is about 50 ft away and on another floor. I would have done the reboot into the working linux system too.
Also, you are assuming a lot saying that windows update will get the driver. I have had little to no success with any of the search online for a driver options included with Vista. I wouldn’t expect it to be much different with 7.
Then again, I think the best solution would be to format the partition that you were putting windows 7 on and just use the extra space for linux. The obvious solution. Sell that copy of 7 to some other sucker.
I prefer Linux, but
This is how it would actually go for anyone who didn’t want to waste their time.
3) just plugin to the router to connect to the internet
So maybe that would be five steps. Plus: who the heck gives out rar files? I haven’t seen one in ages.
You have to download the beta driver?
Well with ndiswrapper you have to download the Windows driver and do a bunch of other crap:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Driver/Ndiswrapper
rar file? Most drivers in windows are distributed as self-extracting executables, nice troll though.
Digikam. Problem solved.
Linux has better out-of-the-box support for existing, still-working hardware (including wireless) than Windows 7 does.
Edited 2009-11-26 02:22 UTC
Then please come at my place and make it work on my laptop.
Where do you get the data to support that claim? That is a super easy thing to say and super difficult to substantiate or disprove.
For example, name an adapter that has a Linux driver and not a Windows driver. The number would be zero, or vanishingly close to it.
Now, might some linux distribution include a driver for some really old wireless adapter that isn’t supported by its vendor any more…
When vendors quit support hardware (and they do it all the time) they stop supporting their driver. When the pull support from MSFT, MSFT pulls the driver from the windows distributions. This is often a license requirement.
So you may argue that Windows should included all drivers ever available. A lot of these drivers are buggy and the vendor dropped support them and won’t fix the bugs. So, keeping around old buggy drivers is good for users how?
Note, MSFT is keeping users from using their hardware – users can always download drivers from the vendor’s site – assuming they still have them. They are just not included in the windows image.
You got that backwards. Linux can use windows drivers so almost zero is the case that you cannot get a driver of some form for the device. There are 6 http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/ndiswrapper/index.php?title=C…
And out of those 6 almost all of them work with native Linux drivers.
Killer nic onboard. Tile cards http://www.tilera.com/products/TILExpress20G.php Note these cards are no OS no go having windows drivers talking to these cards not OS loaded with something is waste of time. Linux is the firmware and Linux has the drivers to there nics. Ok you mean items that Windows can install on not just be a slave to so not your adsl modems either. Ok what about snapdragon’s opps that is a arm processor decent versions of windows don’t install there either.
There is a huge number of chipsets Windows does not have drivers for at all. Answer is not zero. Windows users like claiming it is.
Oiaohm – we’re talking about PC’s. Not embedded devices. Windows is an OS for PC’s. Yes, there are linux variants that run on embedded systems on processors other than x86 and x64. That’s actually really cool. If I was going to build an embedded system, I’d most likely use Linux.
But again, stay in context. This whole discussion started off with Network drives for PC’s.
MSFT doesn’t have Windows OS product targeted for systems that are not based on the PC architecture. Is the fact that some Linux variants can run on non-PC systems a strength? Sure! But don’t go running around claiming that someone Linux has better driver support for PC hardware than windows unless you can show it with at least some anecdotal data.
Cut off the balls off Gimp and call it Paint.NET
But the developers don’t care about the name even though in the US it is the most degrading term you can use for a disabled person.
Businesses in the US are not interested in a program called The Gimp anymore than a program called The c*nt.
Explaining the name to them means about as much as explaining that The c*nt actually stands for Compress Uncompress NT. It’s not a name they want in the office.
But the developers of The Gimp don’t care if the largest software market finds the name offensive because they aren’t selling it. They stubbornly keep it without good reason. It isn’t as if changing it to something innocuous like “paint master” would affect the software.
Unless “Paint master” is a recursive acronym, it’s not even worth considering.
So… are you saying I shouldn’t market my minimalist user-friendly shell under the name “Shell/Extendable?”
comparable to a name with potential innuendo.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=gimp
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gimp#Noun_2
My god people defend the dumbest things in Linuxland.
What exactly would be lost if the name was changed? Would people stop using it?
This type of silly crap is what keeps Linux at 1%.
I’ve always been of the opinion that the OSS trend of kitschy, sometimes offensive names is what keeps great software off the desktops of many businesses and regular users. The GIMP is a shining example of this. I can’t count the times I’ve gotten a snicker or a strange look from a client or family member before they say “no, I’m not going to put something on my computer that sounds like porn”.
Granted, this is mostly due to living in the US with our uptight politically correct mindset. While I won’t say that developers should change their project’s names due to one group’s objections, I do think if they want wider distribution than being rolled into a distro or three they should consider something universally acceptable.
But of course, most OSS projects start out as a developer scratching an itch of their own, and it grows beyond that beginning as OSS can and should do. That’s a great thing, bad names or not.
It is a derogatory grotesque word, reminds me of Pulp Fiction. Additionally the name is useless, meaning it gives absolutely no insight into what the program actually does.
It’s called the GNU Image Manipulation Program which is clear and descriptive. If you think this is a lot to type you can abbreviate it GIMP… but that does not change the program’s name.
Miranda works quite well and has low requirements. But its UI is horrible. Setting it up and dis- and enabling the networks you use is not easy. Especially you should recognize that Thom.
even so, there’s nothing close in terms of performance and extensibility… by the way, the latest releases has some pretty easy preferences besides the more complete one.
Years ago I posted on Linux forums saying that I was looking for a really simple image editor. As I put it, “I am looking for the nano of image editors, not the Emacs or Vim of image editors.”
My needs are basic: just crop an image, resize it, maybe mess with the colors a bit, or take the resolution down a few notches so it will fit on a webpage without taking forever to download. GIMP can do all that, but wow is it complicated.
I’m surprised nobody has come up with such a simple program.
Yea you would think that at the very least someone would fork the gimp and make it more like paint shop pro.
The underlying problem is that Linux has a vocal advocate to skilled developer ratio of about 1 million to 1.
No offense, but Paint Shop Pro? Ugh. Its like the Delphi of the graphics world.
How about gThumb?
http://gthumb.sourceforge.net/home.html
KDE’s Kolourpaint seems to do all of the things you ask for. It is available as part of the kdegraphics package. I don’t think it does all of the things Thom wants, others have mentioned Krita from KOffice as perhaps being better suited to that kind of thing.
It would be kinda useful to have something at the same level as Paint.NET, but to me it’s not a major big deal compared to some of the other issues outstanding on the Linux desktop.
I would also choose Kolourpaint.
About its Qt GUI, two options:
1. How much do the basic KDE libraries to run Kolourpaint weight? If it isn’t that much, they could be shipped with Ubuntu.
2. How much would cost to port Kolourpaint to GTK+? Could it be done by more than a person at a time? I think the problem is relevant enough to, if it makes sense, assign several people to work on it.
Digikam includes a fast, basic, simple-to-use image editor that has all those features:
http://www.digikam.org/drupal/about?q=about/features
spamming the thread when a simple summary would have been adequate.
Edited 2009-11-26 00:39 UTC
The whole thread is a pretense that Linux desktops lack a particular kind of application. I can’t help it if people don’t believe that that is simply not the case.
Apparently, when I merely link to a page, people won’t read it. So, in order to expose what the Linux desktop applications that are currently available can do, I now have to cut and paste summaries of the feature lists.
Well, it’s not very likely a KDE application is going to find its way into the default Ubuntu install.
Many of them (Amarok, K3b, Gwenview, Dolphin et al) are in the default Kubuntu install. They are also in the default Mandriva install, the deault OpenSuSe install, and in the deafult Fedora KDE install.
Digikam, with kipi plugins, is not normally in the default KDE install of most distributions, which is IMO a shame. Also, Dragon Player is normally part of the default KDE install, where I would prefer either VLC or SMPlayer instead (both of which are native Qt applications). I would also consider replacing Konqueror with Arora in default KDE installs from now on, and I would replace the default KDE menu with Lancelot.
However, neither Konqueror nor Arora is really a replacement for Firefox, and neither is KOffice a viable replacement for OpenOffice.org. So there is a strong need still for KDE to support GTK+ applications.
OpenOffice has a QT front end option so GTK is not need for that. Firefox also has a prototype QT.
So really KDE could get GTK free sometime in the next 12 months. I don’t call it a strong need to support GTK.
Its more that the project to unbind are not complete.
As far as I know, both of these “front end” options involve only the dialog boxes to open and save files.
One still needs GTK+ libraries, and themeing support for GTK+ application built in to KDE so that the GTK+ applications will “follow” KDE selections for things like Fonts, Window decorations, Colours and Icons. AFAIK that support is built in to KDE itself, and not built in to GTK+ applications finding themselves running on a KDE desktop.
http://kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=40492&forumpage=96
http://de.kde-apps.org/content/show.php/gtk-kde4?content=74689&PHPS…
Firefox QT one zero GTK code left. Everything is pure QT. Currently the QT version of firefox other than not being stable is faster at rendering pages than the GTK one. gobject is still used to interface with items but that is not GTK.
OpenOffice is mostly 100 percent QT some plugins still can use GTK but main program is 100 percent GTK free when built for QT.
Main reason both were mostly using gtk for dialogs. They use something different internally. All they need for there internal is a buffer system.
Ie do you see them pulling in GTK on windows they don’t. All firefox and Openoffice were really using GTK for was to hide the complexity of X11. QT can do that equally well.
So no GTK theming interface required for either OpenOffice or Firefox running with qt frontends.
Serious point here KDE people have hear the complain we are better because you have to ship with GTK+ to use Firefox and OpenOffice so you are not space effective and that is going by by.
Only thing left that is a uniqueish program that does not have a QT base option is GIMP itself. Guess what Ubuntu just dropped that.
and so is providing a dozen links, something you also do a lot.
People just find those types of posts to be annoying. Summarize a link and be done with it. If they don’t follow the link then that is their problem. There is never a good reason to spam a thread with that much external text.
Normally I would agree, but in this particular instance the text I quoted is precisely on topic for this thread.
The Image Editor part of digikam is precisely the sort of feature set that is needed when we are trying to adjust images. That is to say, Digikam’s Image editor is a lightweight Photoshop, as opposed to a paint application.
Average people can put Digikam’s Image Editor to everyday good use manipulating their photos on their desktop, notebook and netbook systems. The combination of a netbook, Digikam and a digital camera lets you take a portable photo management and display suite with you when you travel, without the need to get photos developed or to carry around any photo albums.
In comparison, not many people doodle with paint programs.
Edited 2009-11-26 01:34 UTC
The funny thing is Canonical is getting into a sticky situation. They have to either:
1. Use Mono and all its problems (no matter what Miguel and Co. would like us to believe)
2. Use a KDE-based application, which are aplenty (as seen by numerous posts above).
Finally, its boiling down to — do we really need default Ubuntu+GNOME at all as the flagship product? Why not switch to Kubuntu+KDE4 and apply all those paper-cuts and tweaks that they do with the GNOME one so we can have the top of the range applications running without apology …
Amarok
K3B
Digikam
Why in the world can’t they switch to using Kubuntu as their default offering and tweaking it to make it user-friendly? 10 iterations with Ubuntu+GNOME has not exactly set the Linux desktop on fire!
Edited 2009-11-26 00:45 UTC
Google “mtpaint”. It’s a lot simpler than GIMP and does the fundamental operations of cropping, resizing, etc.
Perhaps too simple.
Krita is a reasonable compromise that most people should be able to use immediately:
http://ourlan.homelinux.net/qdig/KDE4_desktop/wine_glass_krita_kde4…
Straightforward enough to have a familiar GUI, powerful enough to handle things like transparency as shown.
Did you do that? If so, it would be very cool if you posted the image to http://forum.kde.org/viewforum.php?f=138 and explained about how you did it 🙂
I have Ubuntu running on another laptop and just installed Krita to determine how well it worked.
It took me longer to download / install (via apt-get) than it did to grab a pic, isolate an area, save that area as a new file, convert it to gray scale and save it again under a new name.
Since this is roughly 90% of what I use a graphics program for, I’m happy.
Good for you.
Finally someone injects some sanity into this discussion.
I understand you’re saying Linux, but on the OS X side Preview will take care of all of that and can handle 16-bit per channel color depth (at least I’ve seen that with png format). You can also add annotations (text, shapes), but you can’t actually add layers / adjustment layers / paint with various brushes / etc.
If Pixelmator supported non-destructive adjustment operations and some of the style options that PS has, I’d use it in a heartbeat since the interface seems so much nicer than PS. Not being able to adjust the exposure/style of a layer without it being permanent is too big of a constraint for me, but then again I’m using CS4 as a result so maybe I’m not the target audience.
Kolourpaint will do many basic image operations and is of course a painting program, too. For more photo-specific operations there’s showfoto.
Krita will do everything else.
I don’t mean to advocate KDE over other options or anything, but the fact is that they have apps which target all levels of image manipulation.
If QT and GTK could coordinate a bit on shared color/theme information such that apps can ‘pick up’ at least the basics of the theme of each other’s toolkits, that would help. If, then, a GTK or a QT app could be made to use the file dialog of whatever desktop the user prefers, that would go a long way. At that point who cares what toolkit was used to write the app? People making install CDs, sure, but nobody else.
Edited 2009-11-29 11:53 UTC
I find two things particularly amusing in this article:
One is the statement that Mac OS X lacks a Paint.NET equivalent. This is false, since there is (at least) Pixelmator.
Or do you mean there is no free Paint.NET equivalent? I like free software as much as the next guy, but Pixelmator costs $60, which is very reasonable considering it is an excellent app.
Or you can always install the GIMP (which is fugly as hell on the Mac – as every GTK app outside Linux, in fact).
The second is saying that the GIMP is too high-end for the Ubuntu audience… That is a barrel of laughs just by itself.
Not only the GIMP isn’t that high-end (or complicated really) nor is Ubuntu’s audience so technically impaired that it can’t figure out the GIMP in five minutes. Does the mythical “Joe Sixpack” use Ubuntu? No.
Of course this is merely about the default installation, so it’s mostly irrelevant. Every one on the Ubuntu audience knows how to install packages from the repository.
On the Mac there is a simple version of the GIMP available: Seashore
It takes the most important functionality from the GIMP and packs it into a nice Mac GUI.
Other alternatives to Pixelmator include Acorn and Photoshop Elements.
I looked at some screenshots of Seashore and I fail to see the difference in the UI.
There are a growing number of online image editors that have much better interfaces than Gimp, and near the power of Photoshop.
If you’ve never tried sumopaint.com, you’d be really amazed at how well it works. The interface is spot on.
The Gimp, besides a dumb name, has an absolutely horrible interface. I use PhotoShop all the time without difficulty, but I struggle to do many basic tasks in the Gimp. I’m not sure how anyone could say that The Gimp is for professional users when they don’t support high color pallets or even simple primitives like circles (and don’t tell me about using the select tool to create a circle, how dumb is that).
InkScape is a perfect example of how an open source program can effectively compete against its commercial counterpart – I find its interface better than Illustrators.
Anyway, try sumopaint or one of its online brethren. Pretty nifty!
I never did understand the recurring criticisms about the GIMP’s interface. It is oriented for editing multiple images on a system with virtual desktops available. And it’s not Photoshop, but if you want Photoshop or can’t take five minutes to learn something else (without kicking and screaming all the way through it), then just stick with Photoshop.
As for Inkscape, I never used it, so I can’t say if it’s good or not (I assume it is). But as first impressions go, I started it the other day and was startled by the sheer number of toolbars it shows in the default configuration. It looked like Autocad from the late 90’s.
I just find the double standards intriguing.
I think your reply is contradicted by itself. Quote: “I never did understand the recurring criticisms about the GIMP’s interface.”
Obviously, if it has reoccurring criticisms, it has an issue.
Just about any paint program I’ve ever used, Paint Shop Plus, Corel PhotoPaint, SumoPaint, Paint.Net, Deluxe Paint IV, Neo Paint, Degas, MS Paint, Elements, etc, have all much more intuitive and clean interfaces than The Gimp, as well as generally being more powerful. The Gimp’s interface is an example of obstinate developers – the same kind that keep “reply below the quote” and “place my signature below the quote” default in Thunderbird. What other program in the history of paint programs requires you to use a filter on a select tool to draw a circle? Where’s the polygonal select?
I too have used PhotoPaint and find its interface far more intuitive for beginners than Gimp’s or Photoshop’s. For example, most basic paint programs have a very simple tool that lets you draw basic shapes, with options for fill color, border color and border width. Photoshop has no obvious way to do this.
Reply below the quote is correct behavior. All other behavior is incorrect.
Signature below the quote, and thus below my reply, is correct behavior. All other behavior is incorrect.
I know you may not like it, but it’s true.
The GIMP’s UI is fast and functional. At one time it had some problems with too many confusingly populated menus, but this was fixed long ago.
The GIMP’s UI is exactly what a lot of GIMP users want. The developers are not insane for continuing to build and improve a UI that serves their userbase, rather than alter the UI on the theory that it might get them a larger user base… made up of people who can’t even be bothered to learn a new UI, much less submit patches.
Recurring criticism indicates a problem, but not necessarily the problem that is being voiced. When a user says “The GIMP UI sucks” they usually mean “I tried to do $foo and couldn’t figure it out so I gave up after 5 minutes.” A good UI lets the people who know the UI be extremely functional. Being “easy to learn” is not a feature of a good UI if it is to the detriment of the power user.
All user interaction *requires* learning on the part of the user. Minimizing that is helpful, but only insofar as it does not harm the function of the device. Easier is not always better!
I realize your average UI wonk will vehemently disagree with me, and this is part of the problem. The usability “experts” have all drank deeply from the same well and will all tell the same sad, incorrect story. This is because they are all trying to solve the wrong problem, the problem Apple wanted to tackle in the early 1980s when the average public had no thought of ever owning a computer. That day has come and gone! We no longer require that a GUI be in all cases designed for maximum ease of learning and minimal intimidation. The best UI is the one that lets the expert perform at peak efficiency full stop. Compromising this should be done very carefully and very, very reluctantly.
Inkscape is for vector graphics, not for raster graphics, at least the last time I used it. It’s not bad but has generated so many errors on export that I don’t bother with it any longer.
Gimp is a powerful tool, but its complete overkill for a casual user. So end result is, casual users don’t use gimp, and only the people who know what the heck gimp is use it. Moving it from the default installation just means there will be more space on the cd for stuff that will be used frequently by more people. Gimp remains just an apt-get install away for those who need it though.
As for F-spot as the replacement. Its already on the cd, so it doesn’t add anything thats not already there.
For the people saying there should use a gimp light instead. That would be a great choice if that program existed. Until that program exists, and Ubuntu isn’t going to create it, then they have to use whats available. There are a lot of programs I’d like for Linux to have but it doesn’t and since I don’t have the skills to make them I have to make do with what is there.
like in title
I personally find the GIMP quite easy to use, but that’s probably because I learned on it. I tried using photoshop cs3 on my mac a couple years ago and had to switch back (despite the ugliness of GIMP’s gtk appearance) because nothing was where I thought it should be. I’m sure this is the same thing people are talking about with regard to their problems with GIMP’s UI. If you’re used to a feature-equivalent program whose functions have different names and are found in different places, you’re going to have trouble getting used to the alternative. This goes for any apps. As an Openoffice.org (and office xp before) user, I can’t describe how confused I was when I tried to use Office 2008’s ribbon interface at my wife’s work. Different does not always mean worse.
For quick touch ups, why not use F-spot? It can crop, rotate, red-eye reduce, color correct, and more! If at any point you realize you need to do more to a photo, simply right-click and open with the GIMP (which you’ll have to install now I guess, but you’d have to install paint.net anyway so what’s the difference?)
For drawing, you shouldn’t be using either of these programs. Try Inkscape.
I used to use the GIMP for drawing, but that’s like listening to MP3s with Audacity (a multi-track editor); it will work, but that’s not really what it’s made for;-)
I found the same thing to be true when I had to try and use photoshop at work for some quick image manipulation: cropping a shape out of a photo and inserting it in to another. I’ve done this hundreds of times in the gimp without a problem and thought I knew what I was doing. This 5 minute operation took me a solid hour in photoshop and much frustration besides! Nothing worked the way I expected and I could not find even simple things. It would have been faster to download and install the gimp and then use that.
For editting photo’s with a complete and lightweight programm try FOTOXX.
http://kornelix.squarespace.com/fotoxx
Drawing? Use inkscape it is getting better all the time, I prefer Xara but it is not completely free and it seems difficult to get developers to keep it going.
Again one can see it here, GTK and QT or Gnome and KDE should try to get together.
I will always download GIMP, the programm is superb.
I downloaded Fotoxx recently and it seemed capable, but a bit confused in behaviour. Nothing I’ve seen is smaller–below 1 MB–and able to handle the task.
Lot of people Say KDE dependencies are heavy. Size mono. Seriously size it. Both run-times are about the same weight.
Now the numbers of applications mono can provide can be counted on one hand. Every one of them has a fairly good or great KDE replacement or worse like tomboy have a gtk replacement that don’t require the overhead of the mono runtime. digiKam.org great for just the light image workers it also keeps track of the media files.
Now if KDE runtime is too heavy so is mono. F-Spot is too heavy. GIMP can be skinned and cutdown. Start up time problem of GIMP is a design flaw. Basically make a skin for GIMP to look like F-Spot all the advantages of a useful interface none of the nightmares of mono.
It is even more “basics” than that.
If we are counting the relative dependencies of shipping Ubuntu/Kubuntu desktops, for example, then the relative comparison of “heaviness” is as follows:
Ubuntu (GNOME): GNOME libs + GTK+ libs + Mono
Kubuntu (KDE4): KDE libs + GTK+ libs + Qt
The Kubuntu desktop dependencies are in fact the lighter of the two.
BTW: a GTK+ desktop, such as XFCE or LXDE, does not include the GNOME libs. People seem to keep forgetting about the GNOME libs, for some reason.
Edited 2009-11-25 23:41 UTC
“the nightmares of mono”
can you link me to something describing the “nightmares of mono”
GIMP 2.8 ?
http://veerasundar.com/blog/2009/09/good-news-for-gimp-users-gimp-2…
If Paint.NET is so darn wonderful, then why hasn’t someone ported it to the Mono platform? While Canonical is busy ditching high quality, open source software from its portfolio of standard tools, Mono seems to persist. While I don’t care one way or the other whether Mono is included by default in a distribution, one has to wonder why someone doesn’t simply port Paint.NET to Linux since .NET is supposedly compatible with Mono. Maybe the plan IS to start porting .NET applications over to Ubuntu. And people think Novel is the bad guy in the Linux world.
Miguel de Icaza actually worked a bit on this. It hasn’t gotten very far due to his not having much time for it + apparent lack of interest from other developers.
Because Linux has a forum poster / skilled developer ratio of about 1000000:1.
Everyone expects Miguel and 5 other people to do all the work.
Well, I could and really I should do it, but whats the point of doing it?
It’s not like anyone is actually going to use it.
Working on windows or mac gives you money and fame.
Working on Linux gives you HATE and blame….
(if you are not linus himself that is).
Because Miguel told us that making Mono would bring lots of lovely applications from ther .Net world into the non-Windows world easily. 😉
Ubuntu has merely confirmed what everyone has known for about ten years or more – the GIMP isn’t good enough. No, the GIMP is not an application for professionals so stop deluding yourselves any longer than is necessary. Professionals use Photoshop and have done for some time, and the reasons are numerous.
It’s incredibly sad that people have realised that what is required is a simple paint application as well as a modest application that approaches the functionality of Photoshop in an achievable way. Great. Wind the clock back ten years where Gnome is concerned. KDE at least has Kolourpaint for the real basics, Krita that approaches Photoshop functionality and digiKam as the general photo application.
Developers, developers, developers, applications, applications, applications. While removing the GIMP is a sensible realisation I really don’t know where Ubuntu goes from here to get the required level of functionality.
You couldn’t be more right. As a software developer for a company that makes graphics. It doesn’t make too much sense to buy me a Adobe CS4 seat for about $800. So I decided to fire up GIMP and try to use that.
Now I’m no artist, but I know the principles of image manipulation as well as the next programmer. But GIMP is just bad all the way around. I can actually get work done, and figure things out on my own in Photoshop. Half the time I wonder if GIMP is broken it’s so confusing.
Photoshop.com and aviary.com are really powerful and easy and work on every major platform.
Not for everybody (some people hate web apps), but try them or watch a few videos and judge for yourself.
Chrome(ium)? Cumming soon, Checked.
Miranda? Pidgin is OK or Empathy in the future, kinda Checked.
Paint.NET…hmmm.. Mono anyone? Not possible?
both pidgin and empathy are nice programs, but they’re in an entire different category than Miranda IM…
entirely different? isnt that hyperbole
Seashore is a great Mac app based on GIMP. But for simple operations on any OS, I’ve found the Flash based SumoPaint quite helpful.
I read the news on another website and one of the reasons was needing more space – to which I think that was probably the need for more space but those other justifications were put there to add more weight to the reason. GIMP 2.6 is substantially better than 2.4, however, it isn’t going to be until 2.8/3.0 when we finally see some improvements with the user interface. It is disappointing because many, including myself, have tried to address the short comings only to receive abuse from GIMP maintainers.
Ubuntu did not dump GIMP.
They’re not even moving it from main (Canonical-supported applications) to universe (semi-supported applications) – let alone multiverse (not really supported applications).
All they’re doing is dropping it from the default install disks. After installing ubuntu, GIMP is still just one apt-get away.
That seems perfectly fine by me – I like to use GIMP for image manipulation, but I don’t need it on the default install disks.
grafx2 is really cool, its like deluxe paint. SDL app, very cool. someone needs to wrap it in a gtk frame and voila!
I agree that Paint.NET is really an interesting product. I myself do not use it for working on photos, since I can use Photoshop, PS Elements or PhotoStudio. But it is very handy for may graphic works for webdesign (cutting, merging, using layers…) which are more a pain in PS!
On the Mac I do not feel its lacking: Photoshop Elements and PhotoStudio or GraphicConverter perfectly suit my needs.
Of course if you want such a nice product also for free, then the choice gets more restricted.
On Linux and Unix in genereal I agree hoewever. I am still not yet a friend of GIMP. It has many awkward spots. It does not behave like one expects and misses some important features I have under Photoshop! While it has tons of other features. GIMP is for my photographic needs not a substitute even for venerand PS6.
When I work on Unix, I thus feel the lack of BOTH Paint.NET and Photoshop!
I will continue to work on my two tools, LaternaMagica and PRICE which are done in GNUstep and run also on Mac, but it will be a long way.
LaternaMagica started as an XV and GraphicConverter replacement and I think I will continue to pursue that for now.
I always liked Deluxepaint on the Amiga… Something like that would be good, it was made by EA, the same company that makes all the big budget sports games these days.
Finally somebody is mentioning Deluxe Paint, the coolest paint programm for Amiga. It is not very good for editing photos, but it is much better for creation of images than Photoshop or Gimp.
…maybe google can come up with one, afterall, people might want that ability with chrome os.
I like to use another program for *simple* image editing, it is KolourPaint, but it’s for KDE, and I think they will not ship it with the default installation because of this.
Anyways, KolourPaint don’t have half of the features of Paint.NET, it is more like a copy of MSPaint, with a little more useful features.
This is just one more item that will divide the Linux community. How many more things can we come up with that will do the same thing??? A professional army (MS) will always beat the lot of hair brain (Linux users).
OK. Sarah Palin got me excited from her last interview!
I think it fits well in the discussed niche