Gimp 2.4 ?

[fos]

I have been using Gimp for a number of years. Version 2.4 has been released and the reviews indicate that is a significant improvement to the interface, tool operation, and additional image format options.

Comments have been made on this forum that commercial alternatives such as Photoshop are superior. I have only used Photoshop Elements and not the full blown version. Even with the Elements version upgrade costs are significant.

I have tried Gimp 2.4 rc3 on the Ubuntu 7.10 livecd. It seems to be an real improvement, but I'm not willing to use Ubuntu or Mepis due to their short term support cycles.

Is the 2.4 closing the gap on Photoshop? Are other more functional alternatives available for linux, even something commercial?

fos

[danieldk]

I don't do any serious work, so any 2.x GIMP is fine for me. But I know from people who do use image editors for preparing stuff for print, The GIMP is sub-par, because it does not support color models like CMYK. Yes, there is a CMYK plugin, but this represents every component of CMYK by an RGB layer. That takes a lot of memory when you're working on larger images, and it's not really comfortable to work with these layers as a representation of a color model (what you want is layers that can do CMYK).

nip2 is an alternative that does support more color models, but it is not completely the same sort of program. If one is willing to pay for a program, Pixel32 is probably about the best one can get for Linux (and a dozen other platforms).

[bhobjj]

, but I'm not willing to use Ubuntu or Mepis due to their short term support cycles.


Actually, Ubuntu has fairly long support.
The first Ubuntu release was only supported for 18 months.
The 1st Ubuntu public release was October 2004 (4.10) this had security updates for a period of 18 months 4.10 support officially ended in April 2006.

Ubuntu 6.06,Dapper (June 2006) and 7.10 Gutsy (October 2007) each have 3 year support. There are a handful of Ubuntu releases in between those that are not LTS (long term support) releases for those that want to be on the bleeding edge.

There are also a "backports" repositories for the different releases

Ubuntu is my 1st choice Distro for helping someone get started with "Linux".

I am happy with Debian Lenny at home and using Etch at work.


-BoB

[danieldk]

I don't think three years is long. If some production is in machine, and if it is a server or a desktop machine that is not for me, I want it to work until the hardware becomes obsolete.

CentOS is supported for seven years. This means that I can drop a server somewhere, and not care about it (distrowise). No one forces me to update after 18 months or 3 years. E.g. my girlfriend uses CentOS 4. It's fast on her slightly older hardware. CentOS 4 was released at the beginning of 2006. If this were Ubuntu I had to start worrying now, or within a year, depending on the release. We don't want to, because the machine runs fine, and does the job for her.

Heck, even Windows releases are supported for many years (six or seven?), why do we put up with 18 month or 3 year support cycles? Three years may look long, but 6.04 is about one and a half year old now, so, it's supported only for one and a half year at this moment. For any production work you want a system with long term support to stabilize for a year or so (to make sure all the bugs are worked out), and then still have plenty of support time.

E.g. many companies started deploying CentOS 4 not too long ago. It is tried and tested now, software vendors provide applications, hardware, and support for the platform, and it is supported until 2013.