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GIMP, the GNU Image Manipulation Tool, is a powerful image editing tool and is present in Ubuntu as a default application.
GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages.
Recently though, at the Ubuntu Developer Summit, the Ubuntu developer community has decided to discontinue providing GIMP as one of the default applications in the distribution.
GIMP is a powerful tool and has been a part of Ubuntu for a really long time. Although, this decision was taken to reduce the size of the Ubuntu live CD, it may have many other side advantages and logical explanations.
- The general end-user hardly uses GIMP, it is more of a professional software.
- The GIMP UI is complex and has many options, settings and editing capabilities.
- It takes up a huge amount of disk space.
- Windows does not bundle a Photoshop like software with itself, a basic image editing software should suffice.
- F-Spot photo viewer is good enough for basic photo editing.
With all these points in mind, developers at the Ubuntu Development Summit has decided to remove GIMP from the next Ubuntu release onwards. Bye bye GIMP.
Author: Chinmoy Kanjilal
Chinmoy Kanjilal is a tech enthusiast, a web2.0 and Linux evangelist and an Android fanboy. He has an in depth knowledge of working of software, operating systems, hardware and computer networks. Blogging is his favorite pastime. You can connect with him on Twitter @ckandroid.Chinmoy Kanjilal has written 513 articles for us.
The author of this post can be contacted at chinmoy@techie-buzz.com
@Bugsbane:
Exactly what's needed – great idea!
Point being the very easy to understand-approach of having these categories, rather than a quadrillion choices to confuse most non-techies.
Of course access to all available software should still be there, but this as a "first screen" would be so nice.
Cheers!
Most people opposing removing the Gimp, mainly do so because they want to make sure people who *would* use it will still find it quickly.
One solution to this, which would also help people find all the other awesome software we have to offer, is going beyond just having recommended options in the package manager, but introducing people to them when they first open the desktop. I did these working html mockups in the Web Browser Widget on Kubuntu, but the same idea would apply equally to Ubuntu. This is almost completely implemented already just in the mockup and could just use apt-url. It also introduces people to more excellent software based on their interests, which we need to do anyway, and lets us free space on the disk at the same time. Win-win-win. :)
Mockups:
What categories are available? http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/5836/suggestca...
After clicking on one category: http://img682.imageshack.us/img682/6502/suggestre...
awesome mockups @Bugsbane. I would like to know more on your work.
GIMP does not take up a huge amount of disk space. The Ubuntu build system is defective and miscalculates the amount of space that an installed package requires.
This is a totally foolish decision
Windows also do not bundle office suite … so Ubuntu will also remove OOo ???
Its the complete nature of ubuntu has made it successful. If it decides to strip off the softwares why we should use ubuntu ??? we will be happy with windows
Ubuntu developers must rethink of their decision
"Windows does not bundle a Photoshop like software with itself"
i take offense to this being quoted as a reason. the others may be valid, but this one certainly isn't.