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Dallas Ubuntu Developer Summit: 10.04 to Drop Gimp
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Comments (32)
12 earlier comments in the full thread.
If they are so concerned about space they should put f-spot in the repository along with all the mono that comes with it. I do not have a problem if someone wants to use f-spot, they can load it from the repository.
I think I smell a little chicken in this UDS decision. Bok bok.
I think I smell a little chicken in this UDS decision. Bok bok.
Another thing to think about, especially for a distro whose Bug #1 is “Microsoft has a majority market share”: what better way to ease the transition from Windows to Linux than using cross-platform apps? Firefox is popular on Windows. OOo and Gimp have sizable presences on Windows. Audacity and Digikam run on Windows. http://osswin.sourceforge.net/ lists a whole bunch of OSS apps for Windows.
tuxchick, you won't find a bigger proponent of cross-platform apps than I. In fact, I think cross-platform apps are the best way (some might say the only way) of bringing users from proprietary OSes over to the other side.
Quoting: And I'm switching to Windows right now.Wow - isnt that way more trouble than either a) typing "sudo apt-get install gimp" or b) opening synaptic, searching for gimp, clicking "mark for install", then clicking apply?
At any rate, it's not me that wants to remove gimp. I'm just trying to make sense of their decision.
As pointed out by someone else on another thread, Gthumb would make a better replacement. No need to create albums, just open folders and has a basic editor. And No Mono to boot...
I also agree that the name "Gimp" is not the best. But, the average Joe user doesn't know what an F-Stop is either.
I also agree that the name "Gimp" is not the best. But, the average Joe user doesn't know what an F-Stop is either.
For what it's worth, I've used GIMP as a photo processing tool for print at my "other job" (when I'm not promoting Free/Open Source Software, I'm a newspaper editor in Santa Cruz, California), having to use it when the newspaper for which I work ran out of Photoshop licenses. It performed remarkably, as if that needs saying.
This is a tempest in the proverbial teapot, to be sure. However, as insignificant as it might seem, it does send a message that I hope Ubuntu will reconsider. Also, to be fair, in the past Fedora has left out OO.o on its live CD due to space considerations, leaving those who install it to go get it post-install.
This is a tempest in the proverbial teapot, to be sure. However, as insignificant as it might seem, it does send a message that I hope Ubuntu will reconsider. Also, to be fair, in the past Fedora has left out OO.o on its live CD due to space considerations, leaving those who install it to go get it post-install.
Quoting:But, the average Joe user doesn't know what an F-Stop is either.
Indeed. I did'n know what an "OpenBSD" was, though I have to admit it sounded 'open'. I knew what a Phoenix was, but I didn't actually know what to imagine for a Firefox. I did know what an opera was, but not that it was related to the net. I did know what an aXe was, but not that it was something you could use to edit text (or kernel configs for that part). I did know what pico was, but I didn't suppose something that small could be visible.
Let's compare: I immediately unerstood what OpenOffice, Koffice, 'sendmail' and "ktorrent/KDevelop" were. But does that mean "Firefox" is less popular?
The first thing I thought when I heard GIMP was the great "open" internet project called the "Great Internet Mersenne Prime" (but where the heck is the search?), which started in exactly the same month as the image manipulator. Something about helping the world / maybe winning a prize by means of donating something. Pretty confusing. But I suspect I'm the only one...
Oh, and I have to add I was misreading the title, I thought it was they were "dropping Gnome". Now that would save space!
Well, that worked for Knoppix.
Slackware also dropped GNOME some time ago.
But Slackware has never had a live CD. Also, Slackware (well, Pat V.) had been carrying two full desktop environments (GNOME and KDE), plus several more lightweight DE's. It wasn't like dropping GNOME left Slackware users with no bloated desktop options.
My contention, as hinted above, is that what Mono seems to bring to F-Spot is an iPhoto-like cosmetic. It more closely resembles iPhoto than any other image archiving/viewing app. (And I'm not even taking into account the time iPhoto deep-sixed my database and I had to rescue 1,000+ images from potential oblivion; I digress.)
That iPhoto-likeness is all well and good, but there are problems with F-Spot beyond the EXIF dating bug mentioned on LXer recently. In the EXIF bug, F-Spot supposedly assigns the time the image is imported, replacing the time the image was created. I've had worse trouble with image-dating in F-Spot, and that's another reason I'm not entirely happy with it as the "default" Ubuntu image application.
F-Spot is great if you like the whole concept of a database a la iPhoto. Unfortunately, I've tried to "import" images into F-Spot that, since they were already on the hard drive, stayed where they were, even though I clearly wanted to "move them into F-Spot," which only seems to work when importing from outside the system (e.g. from a USB-connected digital camera). Maybe my images are both in F-Spot and outside it? I really haven't figured that out yet.
I prefer to use my own arrangement of folders/directories and organize my images that way. With regular folders/directories, it makes it easy to switch applications yet still have access to the images. In iPhoto you can create an "album" out of photos in the database. In F-Spot, it seems you can only "tag" images. Not having an "album" feature is yet another deal-breaker for F-Spot.
Both iPhoto and F-Spot are lock-ins as far as the database (and the byzantine folder structure created by same). At least you can right-click on an image in F-Spot and open it in any other application on the system. That's a positive. It's supposed to crop images, but I can't figure it out. And no, the "help" isn't much help, at least in the version of F-Spot running in Ubuntu Karmic.
In the past, I seem to remember digiKam doing the same kind of database thing as F-Spot, and there's still a database involved, but I can work on images in digiKam with a traditional folder/directory structure and not have date/month subfolders created by the app. So that's much better.
But in gThumb, which I've been using for about a week, it's up to me as to how I want the images organized. I can use gThumb on any directory in the system.
Never mind that digiKam literally buries F-Spot when it comes to features, but staying in the GNOME world, gThumb allows me to resize images, which for me is a personal "must" in any image editing/archiving app. F-Spot doesn't do that. I repeat: F-Spot does not resize images.
In gThumb i can also access the embedded caption data (in the IPTC metadata) that all the photographers I work with use on their images. It's not perfect, not as good as digiKam (which, in turn, is not as good as the free, not-FOSS IrfanView in Windows) but good enough for my purposes. F-Spot can neither pick up the captions embedded by other applications nor embed captions that other applications can in turn read/edit. More lock-in.
I understand that digiKam can't be in Ubuntu base since it takes between 60 and 70 packages just to get digiKam into a GNOME desktop. And I could understand if the goals of F-Spot development were to be as feature-rich as digiKam. But I don't think that's the plan. Now, if only F-Spot could be as good as gThumb. That is perhaps doable. But why make F-Spot "as good as" gThumb when we ALREADY HAVE gTHUMB?
To that end I encourage all the Ubuntu developers/MOTUs/what-have-yous to give gThumb (and digiKam - just to see what the competition is doing) a try, look deep into your geekish soul and make a better case as to why F-Spot is in Ubuntu base at all, let alone as a "better" app than gThumb AND the GIMP.
Re: OpenBSD ... yeah - it's supposed to be more locked-down to the outside world than other OSes on the server. Maybe they should have called it ClosedBSD. I think they called it "Open" because the -current development tree is available publicly at all times for anyone to see. The project is still your typical "benevolent dictatorship," more dictatorship, less benevolent, but anybody who uses or codes it pretty much know what they're getting into. The project is certainly open about how it does what it does.
That iPhoto-likeness is all well and good, but there are problems with F-Spot beyond the EXIF dating bug mentioned on LXer recently. In the EXIF bug, F-Spot supposedly assigns the time the image is imported, replacing the time the image was created. I've had worse trouble with image-dating in F-Spot, and that's another reason I'm not entirely happy with it as the "default" Ubuntu image application.
F-Spot is great if you like the whole concept of a database a la iPhoto. Unfortunately, I've tried to "import" images into F-Spot that, since they were already on the hard drive, stayed where they were, even though I clearly wanted to "move them into F-Spot," which only seems to work when importing from outside the system (e.g. from a USB-connected digital camera). Maybe my images are both in F-Spot and outside it? I really haven't figured that out yet.
I prefer to use my own arrangement of folders/directories and organize my images that way. With regular folders/directories, it makes it easy to switch applications yet still have access to the images. In iPhoto you can create an "album" out of photos in the database. In F-Spot, it seems you can only "tag" images. Not having an "album" feature is yet another deal-breaker for F-Spot.
Both iPhoto and F-Spot are lock-ins as far as the database (and the byzantine folder structure created by same). At least you can right-click on an image in F-Spot and open it in any other application on the system. That's a positive. It's supposed to crop images, but I can't figure it out. And no, the "help" isn't much help, at least in the version of F-Spot running in Ubuntu Karmic.
In the past, I seem to remember digiKam doing the same kind of database thing as F-Spot, and there's still a database involved, but I can work on images in digiKam with a traditional folder/directory structure and not have date/month subfolders created by the app. So that's much better.
But in gThumb, which I've been using for about a week, it's up to me as to how I want the images organized. I can use gThumb on any directory in the system.
Never mind that digiKam literally buries F-Spot when it comes to features, but staying in the GNOME world, gThumb allows me to resize images, which for me is a personal "must" in any image editing/archiving app. F-Spot doesn't do that. I repeat: F-Spot does not resize images.
In gThumb i can also access the embedded caption data (in the IPTC metadata) that all the photographers I work with use on their images. It's not perfect, not as good as digiKam (which, in turn, is not as good as the free, not-FOSS IrfanView in Windows) but good enough for my purposes. F-Spot can neither pick up the captions embedded by other applications nor embed captions that other applications can in turn read/edit. More lock-in.
I understand that digiKam can't be in Ubuntu base since it takes between 60 and 70 packages just to get digiKam into a GNOME desktop. And I could understand if the goals of F-Spot development were to be as feature-rich as digiKam. But I don't think that's the plan. Now, if only F-Spot could be as good as gThumb. That is perhaps doable. But why make F-Spot "as good as" gThumb when we ALREADY HAVE gTHUMB?
To that end I encourage all the Ubuntu developers/MOTUs/what-have-yous to give gThumb (and digiKam - just to see what the competition is doing) a try, look deep into your geekish soul and make a better case as to why F-Spot is in Ubuntu base at all, let alone as a "better" app than gThumb AND the GIMP.
Re: OpenBSD ... yeah - it's supposed to be more locked-down to the outside world than other OSes on the server. Maybe they should have called it ClosedBSD. I think they called it "Open" because the -current development tree is available publicly at all times for anyone to see. The project is still your typical "benevolent dictatorship," more dictatorship, less benevolent, but anybody who uses or codes it pretty much know what they're getting into. The project is certainly open about how it does what it does.
But think about the Ubuntu-users, Steven. They're supposed to be human beings. They're not supposed to deal with filesystem hierarchies themselves. Ubuntu is ought to do that for them. At least that's what Ubuntu / F-Spot developers seem to think.
Same for the Windows-apps that come on CD-ROM when buying a new camera. Not that bad though, the Windows-app that came with our digi-camera was pretty decent though. Better than digiKam, I'd have to admit. Except with digiKam you can say where your photos are located, and for the 'user-friendly' solutions as I understand, you can not.
Same for the Windows-apps that come on CD-ROM when buying a new camera. Not that bad though, the Windows-app that came with our digi-camera was pretty decent though. Better than digiKam, I'd have to admit. Except with digiKam you can say where your photos are located, and for the 'user-friendly' solutions as I understand, you can not.
So many atrocities committed for the "benefit" of the "average user."
That's strange, even Microsoft didn't implement the atrocity called WinFS, but now F-Spot does. Blame Mono! (That's even more fun than blaming MS!)
@tc: I've often felt that many of these supposed-to-be-super-easy desktops designed for netbooks are actually more cumbersome to use that a standard desktop. I'd put most of them in the category of "atrocities committed for the 'benefit' of the 'average user'."
I know I've seen many applications (ZoneAlarm and Nero from the Windows world come to mind) that at one time were very easy to use (even if thy showed "technical" stuff), and then went for the "Easy to use for the Average User" thing and became horribly difficult to do what I thought were basic tasks in because they buried all of the "technical" stuff deep behind some pretty interface with the 2-5 common options that the "Average User" supposedly needs and understands.
Quoting:But think about the Ubuntu-users, Steven. They're supposed to be human beings. They're not supposed to deal with filesystem hierarchies themselves. Ubuntu is ought to do that for them. At least that's what Ubuntu / F-Spot developers seem to think.
If you've seen your iPhoto database break and had to use some hacky "rescue" app to bring the images out of it (and not bringing out the "albums" you've created in iPhoto), it tends to make you not want a database managing your images, especially one connected to a program that only lets you "tag" photos. That's all I need is hundreds of unorganized tags when I could do better creating directories in the file manager - something every user of Windows and Mac should be quite familiar with, to say nothing of the average and below-average Linux user with GNOME or KDE.
From the fedora 12 release notes:
" Gnote is installed by default in GNOME for this release replacing Tomboy. Gnote is a port of Tomboy from Mono to C++ and consumes fewer resources. Gnote is both an applet that can sit in your GNOME panel as well as an individual application you can run within other desktop environments. Fedora Desktop Live CD since the Fedora 10 release has excluded Mono and hence Mono-based applications like Tomboy due to lack of space. Gnote will be installed by default in the Live CD as well in this release. Tomboy is still available as an optional alternative. If you are upgrading from the previous release you will not be migrated to Gnote and will continue to have Tomboy. Tomboy users can migrate easily to Gnote as it shares the file format and a plugin is available in Gnote that will automatically import Tomboy notes on first run. Many of the Tomboy plugins have been ported to Gnote. The following plugins are available as part of Gnote:
* Bugzilla Links * Tomboy Importer * Fixed Width * Insert Timestamp * Export to HTML * Printing Support * Sticky Notes Importer * Backlinks
You can copy the notes from Tomboy to Gnote using the following command in your home directory:
cp -r .tomboy .gnote
The sticky notes applet is not provided anymore since Gnote provides a better note taking utility and is available by default in this release. "
lol gotta love open source.
" Gnote is installed by default in GNOME for this release replacing Tomboy. Gnote is a port of Tomboy from Mono to C++ and consumes fewer resources. Gnote is both an applet that can sit in your GNOME panel as well as an individual application you can run within other desktop environments. Fedora Desktop Live CD since the Fedora 10 release has excluded Mono and hence Mono-based applications like Tomboy due to lack of space. Gnote will be installed by default in the Live CD as well in this release. Tomboy is still available as an optional alternative. If you are upgrading from the previous release you will not be migrated to Gnote and will continue to have Tomboy. Tomboy users can migrate easily to Gnote as it shares the file format and a plugin is available in Gnote that will automatically import Tomboy notes on first run. Many of the Tomboy plugins have been ported to Gnote. The following plugins are available as part of Gnote:
* Bugzilla Links * Tomboy Importer * Fixed Width * Insert Timestamp * Export to HTML * Printing Support * Sticky Notes Importer * Backlinks
You can copy the notes from Tomboy to Gnote using the following command in your home directory:
cp -r .tomboy .gnote
The sticky notes applet is not provided anymore since Gnote provides a better note taking utility and is available by default in this release. "
lol gotta love open source.
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I read with enormous interest all of the comments that flowed on the earlier posting I made over this same piece of software. When I now combine both those comments and the apparent oncoming situation, I cannot help but feel that Helios' very astute remarks have become even more relevant: I think that the GIMP needs a new name which reflects its use. "Oldies and Boldies" will all know already what to look for if they want to install a really good Linux based image editor, but the name GIMP means nothing to a new comer and I get the feeling that they won't either search on it or even recognise it if it turns up in their search - and that is one big pity.
Such a name change may not be popular with the current user base, or even the developer team, but I do believe the idea has validity purely on a principle that I think is common sense: the name of a piece of software should at least vaguely indicate its function to the interested person - and in my preference, very clearly.