Slashdot Mirror

Also, as others have said, the "closed" sites such as gimp.org are NOT totally inaccessible, they have merely replaced the home page with protest pages with links to the sites' normal pages. Good publicity and hardly onerous!

Here is an example: although the GIMP web site is hosted in the US, several of the most active developers are living and working in Europe. So after some discussion with the other developers, I decided to close the home page of www.gimp.org. Even if you live and work in the U.S., you could be affected because some software developed by many contributors from all around the world could cease to exist because of software patents affecting these developers.

Allowing patents on software and business methods in the U.S. was a bad idea. Several studies have shown that software patents in the U.S. have had a negative impact on the industry. But so far, the damage has been limited because these patents are not accepted worldwide. So in many cases, a company that was more interested in litigation than real innovation was not able to sue the developers who (unknowingly) infringed on its patents because some or all of them were not in the U.S. But this could be different if these patents were valid worldwide (WIPO). The patent holders would have a bigger chance to hit the small companies and small developers, especially those working on Open Source or Free Software (because they cannot buy a license or pay royalties for all potential users).

This protest against the changes in the European law would also be a good way to promote a necessary reform of the U.S. patent system. A growing number of economists in the U.S. are raising their voice against the patentability of software. A clear sign coming from Europe could also help the U.S. industry in the long run.

Some people hide in their shell when their neighbors are threatened. Some people try to help them because they know that they could be affected directly or indirectly. The choice is yours.

Gimp is another...

# Ms Office Standard (Win: 347 / Mac: 357)
# Photoshop (Win: 580 / Mac: 590)
# Illustrator (Win: 390 / Mac: 403)
# Premiere 6.5 (Win: 540 / Mac: 533)
OpenOffice.org
The Gimp
Dia
Cinelerra

Sum: $0

Slashdot isn't based in Europe, so I doubt they would join the demo.

Well, the GIMP website is not hosted in Europe either, but a large number of GIMP developers are living and working in Europe. So I have replaced the home page by an appropriate message, as you can see by visiting it now.

First, you have to write Gay software, such as this Gay Software and license it under the GGPL.

Second, you need to succeed in gathering a few "Gay Users" on slashdot.org, a popular "news for trolls" website

Third, you need to contact Richard Stallman, creator of the GGPL, and ask him to sacrifice a straight person for you in the name of All Fags.

If you have mod points and would like to support GGPL, please moderate this post up.

This post brought to you by SARS Monkey, writer of GGPL software.
And now, the GGPL.
This License applies to any program or other work which contains a Gay regime (such as blue plastic dicks, or a frozen potato reference) placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this Gay General Public License. The "Program", below, refers to any such program or work, and a "work based on the Program" means either the Program or any derivative work under Vatican law: that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it, either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another language. (Hereinafter, translation is included without limitation in the term "modification".) Each licensee is addressed as "a fag".

Activities other than copying, distribution, modification, or cock sucking are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does. (Serve the gay community.)

A fag may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it (up the ass), in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice, Gay pornographic image, and disclaimer of warranty or straightness; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program.

A fag may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee. You may also offer AIDS ribbons and rainbow tattoos, as well.

A fag must also embed a gay demeanor in his software. The mention of the following items MUST BE INCLUDED in each piece of GGPL software:

A blue, plastic cock.

An AIDS ribbon.

A frozen piece of shit.

A cock ring (with or without razor blades.)

KY Jelly.

Anal warts/tearings.

Billy Mays.

Distribution of GGPL software without the inclusion of these gay items is strictly against the code of Gay Software Programmers, and a fag lawsuit will ensue. Please make

First, you have to write Gay software, such as this Gay Software and license it under the GGPL.

Second, you need to succeed in gathering a few "Gay Users" on slashdot.org, a popular "news for trolls" website

Third, you need to contact Richard Stallman, creator of the GGPL, and ask him to sacrifice a straight person for you in the name of All Fags.

If you have mod points and would like to support GGPL, please moderate this post up.

This post brought to you by SARS Monkey, writer of GGPL software.
And now, the GGPL.
This License applies to any program or other work which contains a Gay regime (such as blue plastic dicks, or a frozen potato reference) placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this Gay General Public License. The "Program", below, refers to any such program or work, and a "work based on the Program" means either the Program or any derivative work under Vatican law: that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it, either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another language. (Hereinafter, translation is included without limitation in the term "modification".) Each licensee is addressed as "a fag".

Activities other than copying, distribution, modification, or cock sucking are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does. (Serve the gay community.)

A fag may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it (up the ass), in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice, Gay pornographic image, and disclaimer of warranty or straightness; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program.

A fag may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee. You may also offer AIDS ribbons and rainbow tattoos, as well.

A fag must also embed a gay demeanor in his software. The mention of the following items MUST BE INCLUDED in each piece of GGPL software:

A blue, plastic cock.

An AIDS ribbon.

A frozen piece of shit.

A cock ring (with or without razor blades.)

KY Jelly.

Anal warts/tearings.

Billy Mays.

Distribution of GGPL software without the inclusion of these gay items is strictly against the code of Gay Software Programmers, and a fag lawsuit will ensue. Please make

First, you have to write Gay software, such as this Gay Software and license it under the GGPL.

Second, you need to succeed in gathering a few "Gay Users" on slashdot.org, a popular "news for trolls" website

Third, you need to contact Richard Stallman, creator of the GGPL, and ask him to sacrifice a straight person for you in the name of All Fags.

If you have mod points and would like to support GGPL, please moderate this post up.

This post brought to you by SARS Monkey, writer of GGPL software.
And now, the GGPL.
0. This License applies to any program or other work which contains a Gay regime (such as blue plastic dicks, or a frozen potato reference) placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this Gay General Public License. The "Program", below, refers to any such program or work, and a "work based on the Program" means either the Program or any derivative work under Vatican law: that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it, either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another language. (Hereinafter, translation is included without limitation in the term "modification".) Each licensee is addressed as "a fag". Activities other than copying, distribution, modification, or cock sucking are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does. (Serve the gay community.) 1. A fag may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it (up the ass), in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice, Gay pornographic image, and disclaimer of warranty or straightness; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program. A fag may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee. You may also offer AIDS ribbons and rainbow tattoos, as well. A fag must also embed a gay demeanor in his software. The mention of the following items MUST BE INCLUDED in each piece of GGPL software. A blue, plastic cock. An AIDS ribbon. A frozen piece of shit. A cock ring (with or without razor blades.) KY Jelly. Anal warts/tearings. Billy Mays. Distribution of GGPL software without the inclusion of these gay items is strictly against the code of Gay Software Programmers, and a fag lawsuit will ensue. Please make note of this and include one, if not all, of the Official Gay Items in your software. The GGPL rest

First, you have to write Gay software, such as this Gay Software and license it under the GGPL.

Second, you need to succeed in gathering a few "Gay Users" on slashdot.org, a popular "news for trolls" website

Third, you need to contact Richard Stallman, creator of the GGPL, and ask him to sacrifice a straight person for you in the name of All Fags.

If you have mod points and would like to support GGPL, please moderate this post up.

This post brought to you by SARS Monkey, writer of GGPL software.
And now, the GGPL.
0. This License applies to any program or other work which contains a Gay regime (such as blue plastic dicks, or a frozen potato reference) placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this Gay General Public License. The "Program", below, refers to any such program or work, and a "work based on the Program" means either the Program or any derivative work under Vatican law: that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it, either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another language. (Hereinafter, translation is included without limitation in the term "modification".) Each licensee is addressed as "a fag". Activities other than copying, distribution, modification, or cock sucking are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does. (Serve the gay community.) 1. A fag may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it (up the ass), in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice, Gay pornographic image, and disclaimer of warranty or straightness; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program. A fag may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee. You may also offer AIDS ribbons and rainbow tattoos, as well. A fag must also embed a gay demeanor in his software. The mention of the following items MUST BE INCLUDED in each piece of GGPL software. A blue, plastic cock. An AIDS ribbon. A frozen piece of shit. A cock ring (with or without razor blades.) KY Jelly. Anal warts/tearings. Billy Mays. Distribution of GGPL software without the inclusion of these gay items is strictly against the code of Gay Software Programmers, and a fag lawsuit will ensue. Please make note of this and include one, if not all, of the Official Gay Items in your software. The GGPL rest

First, you have to write Gay software, such as this Gay Software and license it under the GGPL.

Second, you need to succeed in gathering a few "Gay Users" on slashdot.org, a popular "news for trolls" website

Third, you need to contact Richard Stallman, creator of the GGPL, and ask him to sacrifice a straight person for you in the name of All Fags.

If you have mod points and would like to support GGPL, please moderate this post up.

This post brought to you by SARS Monkey, writer of GGPL software.
And now, the GGPL.
0. This License applies to any program or other work which contains a Gay regime (such as blue plastic dicks, or a frozen potato reference) placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this Gay General Public License. The "Program", below, refers to any such program or work, and a "work based on the Program" means either the Program or any derivative work under Vatican law: that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it, either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another language. (Hereinafter, translation is included without limitation in the term "modification".) Each licensee is addressed as "a fag". Activities other than copying, distribution, modification, or cock sucking are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does. (Serve the gay community.) 1. A fag may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it (up the ass), in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice, Gay pornographic image, and disclaimer of warranty or straightness; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program. A fag may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee. You may also offer AIDS ribbons and rainbow tattoos, as well. A fag must also embed a gay demeanor in his software. The mention of the following items MUST BE INCLUDED in each piece of GGPL software. A blue, plastic cock. An AIDS ribbon. A frozen piece of shit. A cock ring (with or without razor blades.) KY Jelly. Anal warts/tearings. Billy Mays. Distribution of GGPL software without the inclusion of these gay items is strictly against the code of Gay Software Programmers, and a fag lawsuit will ensue. Please make note of this and include one, if not all, of the Official Gay Items in your software. The GGPL rest

Every single app that I would want to run is already available and runs under Linux natively. For example:

mozilla, neverwinter nights(w/ expansion pack), gcc, gdb, make, gnuplot, bc, gimp, icebreaker, valgrind, electric fence, Crossfire, LyX, angband, Nethack (falcon's eye), vim, XFree86, pekwm and netpbm.

There are few apps that I run that are not on that list. Really, if you think about it. On any computer system the top 90% of the apps you run could probably be counted on one hand.

But I'm one of those unusual people who has his laser printer working in Linux and only has a windows box to test the software I write. I compile the windows version on Linux of course. (using these scripts to build the cross compiler).

You can draw lines in GIMP? I honestly couldn't figure it out...

I am getting a bit tired of comparing Photoshop with GIMP. GIMP Is Mot Photoshop (well, nice try at least :). When you would search for jobs as a graphic designer, you would see that they require that you can use Photoshop (among other adobe programs). You won't see that with GIMP for some years, so yes it is THE standard (you won't find many Macs without running several Adobe applications).

Before I learned to use Photoshop, which was a requirement of my study, I used the GIMP for the homepages I designed. The handling has always been somewhat weird but I don't complain, because I get it for free. If I was in the mood of complaining, I could start a GUI fork of the project, if it didn't work out talking with the developers. When I learned Photoshop, I also found many things weird in the beginning, but it wouldn't continue to annoy me that much as the GIMP GUI does. But when I take a look at GIMP's Developer Page I see a lot of progress happening (docks, CMYK, better (not perfect) text-tool).

Instead of pestering someone else to port Macromedia Flash, why don't you learn how to use SVG. And instead of pestering someone else to port Adobe Photoshop, why don't you start using the gimp.

Everyone who wants to see linux on the desktop should support the people who develop applications for it, not the people who don't.

Can't figure out straight lines in Gimp? Sounds like you need Wilbur-Helper!

I used to use Photoshop, and then I switched to Corel Photo-Paint. I had used the gimp off and on just for experimentation, but never seriously. A few versions later, and now I use nothing else. I do not miss photoshop, and I doubt I ever will.

You may be happy hearing that GIMP is slowly starting to support CMYK

- Added naive RGB CMYK conversion routines [Sven]
- Generalized paint tools [Mitch]

The best part of the GIMP is that it is free. For those of us on Windows, the idea of using Photoshop on Linux is cool, but I'd still have to pay for it. Until then, the GIMP is my tool of choice.

Because the expensive proprietary software is sometimes far better than the free alternative?

Altogether, I think that Blender is a very attractive choice for the 3D hobbyist--someone who enjoys 3D and graphics but is never going to make a living from it. After all, why shell out $1000+ when a little extra effort can get 95% of the features for free? If you plan to have a career in 3D, or have lots of money, it's probably worth it, but as one who's just in it for the fun, the eye candy, and the challenge of making things work, open source offers me four very decent tools to use together: Blender, Wings3D, Yafray, and The Gimp. All of these work to some degree on Windows, Mac, and Linux, sometimes more. There's never been a better time to get into 3D. And aspiring graphic artists shouldn't turn up their noses at such free tools either. Although you could be more immediately useful to a studio by knowing Maya/Max/Softimage/etc, simply using 3D and graphics programs of any kind will teach you tons that can easily extend to whatever programs you use later.

I did this, almost... At least I downloaded a whole suite of high detail aerial photographs of our lake, which is fairly big (about 20 by 4 km).

Then I glued all aerial photographs together in Gimp producing a huuuge map.

Then I imported it into Sodipodi and drew a vectorised contour.

Now, I am searching for a nice GIS program where I incorprate my freshy-fresh +4000 GPS-coordinates! Any help appreciated! Perhaps Grass is the best? It seems intimidating however.

Unrefuted testimony is presumed fact. I ao declare, the person you are responding to is in-fact denying that Windows and Lunix and BDS are using *RECYCLED* electrons to store data!

This was proven by the ol' Old Testament biblical concept of unrefuted testimony presumed fact:

Planet Earth was proven to be flat. You can't prove otherwise until astronaughts go into space and take a picture while on the pancake-shaped moon. That is why the lunar landing missions to the moon are all fake! Fake! The moon is flat, same with planet Earth! You can't trust pictures taken from space probes looking at planet Earth, because we know freely-available technology is availble to manipulate and doctor-up space evidence! Doo-doo-Im-not-listening-doo-doo.

Not exactly. GDK is an *abstraction* layer with multiple backends, the X11 one being the most prominent. To quote from the GTK/GNOME developers' website: "Instead of directly building on top of the X Window System, GTK+ introduces an intermediate layer, GDK, which isolates GTK+ from the details of the windowing system. This simplifies things for the programmer and increases portability." See the webpage. Through GDK backends, GTK has been ported to MSWindows as well as DirectFB(see also here).

I hope that helps.

Ok, ok, hear me out!
PS kicks every other Pixelprogramm up and down the street. I get that.
But what with the rest? We've got Cinelerra for free (beer, speech and all), we've got Pinnacle who recently bought Fast, a kick ass high end Video Tool company and are now shedding their technology in bundles in every Walmart alongside realtime NLE cards for a dime-a-dozen.
And we got Apple who's new Final Cut Pro apears to be kicking the living crap out of Premiere. So I heard from my former Video NLE Teacher the other day who'd wee-wee in his pants whilst raving about the superdooper Premiere just 3 years ago when he tought us.

From what it looks like to me with every software company in the vector/pixel, video and 3D business struggling for life and the cheap ones getting cheaper or even being bought by hardware vendors and Gimp pushing the GPL-freeness envelope on the Pixelside and Sodipodi giving Freehand, Illustrator and CorelDraw the GPL creeps, it seems these companys like Macromedia *and* Adobe aswell would be better of finding new fields of business *fast*.

Just my 2 Eurocents.

How about Film Gimp? It was used in several films to edit stills. HA!

--

This truly is wonderful news! There are a large number of client applications that use Qt for display rendering that really aren't fundamentally X11 applications.

Several of these applications are used daily by our engineering team.

Having a native (or at least X11-free) version of these tools is a real bonus for us; but in particular, it's a bonus for the less sophisticated users that would benefit from using applications as though they were OS/X native applications.

Think about CEO or tech support people who don't (won't) want to run X11 just in order to look at that packet trace or 'jiggle that SNMP MIB'.

I, for one, look forward to this, and will happily help port a few key applications to the Darwin / OS X platform.

This, and portage all in one week! Good News For All!

Ah yes, the GIF patent. That stopped any free software using GIFs.

The MP3 patent's licensing terms don't even prohibit legal Free Software implementations - you pay a one-off licensing fee, and you're fine. There seem seem to be plenty.

The reality is, those patents haven't killed MP3 or GIFs. If anything, it's Ogg Vorbis and PNGs which are an endangered species - not from litigation, but disuse. (The MP3 patent, by the way, is Fraunhofer's - a German group, not US.) Patents or no patents, MP3 and GIF are still the format for that application, and supported by plenty of free/open source programs.

So the future for free software is (and this would be fine with me, except that it doesn't promote either fair use or interoperability) a ghetto of free formats like Ogg.

Unlikely. As I said, we've had MP3 and GIF patents for years without this result - the former from a German company, not a US one - without the result you predict. Why would Europe adopting the US system have this result, when it hasn't happened in the US?

It's touchy when you're poking around in the area of using other people's stuff. Even if you do qualify for "fair use," someone can still accuse you and wreak major havoc on whatever you're trying to create. My suggestion (that is, if hiring a graphic artist is out of the question): Get the Gimp (OSS OS's or Windows ), learn to use the Bezier select tool (try TigerT's tutorial on how to make a 3D box), and whip together some quick icons. Then, if your project (which I'm assuming is independent, if you don't have a graphic artist) catches on and makes some money or something, the icons can be replaced later. You won't have to hassle with fair use at all.

It's touchy when you're poking around in the area of using other people's stuff. Even if you do qualify for "fair use," someone can still accuse you and wreak major havoc on whatever you're trying to create. My suggestion (that is, if hiring a graphic artist is out of the question): Get the Gimp (OSS OS's or Windows ), learn to use the Bezier select tool (try TigerT's tutorial on how to make a 3D box), and whip together some quick icons. Then, if your project (which I'm assuming is independent, if you don't have a graphic artist) catches on and makes some money or something, the icons can be replaced later. You won't have to hassle with fair use at all.

Ok, this is both karma-whoring and shameless plugging. All in just one comment! :-)

I did some kind of "music CD" by myself too, which I called Random Stuff. It's me playing guitar (no, it's not shred) and using samples for the backings. And it's free (as in beer and as in speech) for everyone to download (mp3 format now, but ogg are in the works) and use. So you could say, to some extent, that it's "open source music". It has some limitations, anyway:

• You can download my music and redistribute it freely, but you can't sell it.
• If you use part of it in your music, you have to give me credit.

Those are really the only limitations. IANAL, so I may be forgetting something extremely important :-) I use samples from free sites (as Loopasonic or Acid Planet), so I guess there's no problem on that part.

But then, of course, that's not all. I also sell self-burnt CDs to my friends, or anyone that wants one :-) The CDs have a data track and several audio tracks (the songs). In the data part there are HTML pages explaining who I am and what I used (software, hardware, etc.) and mp3 of the songs in the CD plus some rarities that have so bad quality that I didn't dare to put them as audio tracks. I made a cover for it using Kover and The Gimp. As a finishing touch, I sign each CD (all 7 of them, by the moment O:-)). It's a pity, but the central part of it, the music, was made using Sonic Foundry's Acid Music. I'd like to use an OSs app for Linux (or Windows, but OSS), but I found none as simple and useful as Acid Music. Maybe Ardour, but I hadn't tried it yet.

It's quite an amateurish attempt, but the secret aim behind it is not money, nor fame, nor critical acclaim; it's chicks! :-P ;-)

What is the GIMP doing in a BSD Reference book?!? Seems like fluff to me. Especially when you can download a pretty comprehensive GIMP manual online.

Actually, GNUcash doesn't run on windows, the third 'platform' listed.

True. Actually, it isn't portable beyond systems that have GNOME 1.4 and a plethora of other libraries installed. It's also GTK-based. The huge number of dependencies in GNUCash are its greatest portability weakness, IMO. I doubt it would ever run on Windows without substantial re-engineering.

Just a followup:

Does Photoshop have anything like Resynthesizer?

How about Tileable Blur?

How about the Solid Noise plugin?

Is there native warping functionality in Photoshop, as IWarp provides in the GIMP?

How about the gorgeous Supernova?

IIRC, Xaos makes something (expensive) like GIMPressionist. Of course, Photoshop doesn't come with this functionality.

Lots of other things -- I haven't used Photoshop for a long time, so I'm not going to be much good at pointing out the things that it lacks...just pointing out that the functionality sword cuts two ways.

For output intended for print, Photoshop is better. For output intended to be digital, GIMP is better. Pretty simple.

Just a followup:

Does Photoshop have anything like Resynthesizer?

How about Tileable Blur?

How about the Solid Noise plugin?

Is there native warping functionality in Photoshop, as IWarp provides in the GIMP?

How about the gorgeous Supernova?

IIRC, Xaos makes something (expensive) like GIMPressionist. Of course, Photoshop doesn't come with this functionality.

Lots of other things -- I haven't used Photoshop for a long time, so I'm not going to be much good at pointing out the things that it lacks...just pointing out that the functionality sword cuts two ways.

For output intended for print, Photoshop is better. For output intended to be digital, GIMP is better. Pretty simple.

Ok, so the Slashdot take is a bit sensational, and not fact-heavy, but Adobe does have a rather strong hold on the Mac-using image and publishing market. It seems to me that there's only a few things that have to happen for The Gimp to all but replace Photoshop for this purpose. All it really needs is some company to come along and give it a) plugins for dealing with patented color-management for ready-for-print applications (no problem as plugins with licensing, as long as you pay Adobe and the few other companies a royalty) and b) a Mac-native UI that fixes some of the basic brokenness of The Gimp's poor UI choices (e.g. the nearly un-navigatable menus).

Both of these tasks are many orders of magnitude smaller than rolling your own Photoshop replacement, and The Gimp has a far more flexible plugin architecture and tons of people who are happy to write plugins in C, scheme, Perl, Python and other languages!

Anyone have the money to kick something like this off? Consider this you Make Money Fast wakeup call!

And, if you need more of a push... there's CinePaint (ne "Film Gimp"), which you could integrate into your product and add a whole other market.

WineX

Nothing quite matches the power of a direct, pithy answer to whip the carpet out from under a troll's feet... but WineX is only part of the answer. Win4Lin is also only part of the answer. Whole-of-machine emulators like Bochs and VMWare are not the answer. WINE seems to be close to the right the answer, and WineX is an intgeresting side-branch of it.

The real right answer, however, is World Domination for Linux - even if you're a BSD fan.

Why?

Because once your favourite app is ported to Linux, it's ported to anywhere. Linux is a damn sight easier for another Unix (thinking specifically of *BSD here) to emulate even in binary than Windows is.The difference between Linux and, say, NetBSD for most applications is completely buried in automake or any similar portability tool. Of course, wrapping it in something like SDL or Qt wipes out a lot of the interface differences as well. Once an application is portable (OpenOffice.org, Mozilla, Konqueror, The GIMP, KOffice), it can compete on its merits rather than its application burden.

As Bill and his buddies well know, that means `Goodbye, Microsoft'. Which is why they're working their little asses off trying to meld all of their apps into one inscrutible, indivisible, Palladium-wrapped, Microsoft-certified unmanageable blob while they still have the market share to force it down their users' throats.

Rapid World Domination by Libre software is the only way available to us to stop this.

*ahem* Gimp for Windows

Why fork?

Good question. The initial fork occured a few years ago, when a team of developers started to work on Gimp16 for adding 16-bit color channels into the GIMP. This was needed for editing films, but it was not appropriate at that time to integrate the new code into the core so this became a fork. However, the GIMP developers expected that the main GIMP code and Gimp16 (which was later called Hollywood Gimp, Gimp's Film Version and then FilmGimp) would converge later and that the core of GIMP 2.0 would support most of the features that were required for film editing (mainly 16-bit and floating point color channels). The user interface may have kept some differences due to the specific needs of film editors.

Unfortunately, for various reasons (political as well as technical), the gap between GIMP and FilmGimp widened a few months ago, soon after Robin Rowe took over the maintenance of FilmGimp and resurected the project that had not been very active in the last two years. There was some discussion about the fork on the GIMP developers mailing list in November and December last year (you can check the list archives here). The conclusion was that the FilmGimp developers were not interested in bringing their code closer to the current GIMP, and there are too few people working on GEGL (the library that should bring 16-bit and float channels into the GIMP) so it will still take a while before the main GIMP code is suitable for film editing. I am still sad about the way this whole thing happened. I tried to bring the two projects closer to each other, but obviously I failed.

I don't know how the future will look like. I wish the CinePaint developers good luck (honestly) and I hope that they will be successful. This fork of the GIMP suits the specific needs of the film industry and I hope that many studios will be able to use it and do great stuff with it. However, I expect that most people interested in photo editing, web design and general graphic editing will find that the GIMP is more suitable for them than CinePaint.

By the way, if you want to know some of the plans for the future of the GIMP, I suggest that you have a look at developer.gimp.org. In particular, read the plans for the future of the GIMP, posted in December 2000 but still valid. Besides this, the developers mailing list and the list of enhancements submitted to Bugzilla are good sources of information.

Why fork?

Good question. The initial fork occured a few years ago, when a team of developers started to work on Gimp16 for adding 16-bit color channels into the GIMP. This was needed for editing films, but it was not appropriate at that time to integrate the new code into the core so this became a fork. However, the GIMP developers expected that the main GIMP code and Gimp16 (which was later called Hollywood Gimp, Gimp's Film Version and then FilmGimp) would converge later and that the core of GIMP 2.0 would support most of the features that were required for film editing (mainly 16-bit and floating point color channels). The user interface may have kept some differences due to the specific needs of film editors.

Unfortunately, for various reasons (political as well as technical), the gap between GIMP and FilmGimp widened a few months ago, soon after Robin Rowe took over the maintenance of FilmGimp and resurected the project that had not been very active in the last two years. There was some discussion about the fork on the GIMP developers mailing list in November and December last year (you can check the list archives here). The conclusion was that the FilmGimp developers were not interested in bringing their code closer to the current GIMP, and there are too few people working on GEGL (the library that should bring 16-bit and float channels into the GIMP) so it will still take a while before the main GIMP code is suitable for film editing. I am still sad about the way this whole thing happened. I tried to bring the two projects closer to each other, but obviously I failed.

I don't know how the future will look like. I wish the CinePaint developers good luck (honestly) and I hope that they will be successful. This fork of the GIMP suits the specific needs of the film industry and I hope that many studios will be able to use it and do great stuff with it. However, I expect that most people interested in photo editing, web design and general graphic editing will find that the GIMP is more suitable for them than CinePaint.

By the way, if you want to know some of the plans for the future of the GIMP, I suggest that you have a look at developer.gimp.org. In particular, read the plans for the future of the GIMP, posted in December 2000 but still valid. Besides this, the developers mailing list and the list of enhancements submitted to Bugzilla are good sources of information.

Why fork?

Good question. The initial fork occured a few years ago, when a team of developers started to work on Gimp16 for adding 16-bit color channels into the GIMP. This was needed for editing films, but it was not appropriate at that time to integrate the new code into the core so this became a fork. However, the GIMP developers expected that the main GIMP code and Gimp16 (which was later called Hollywood Gimp, Gimp's Film Version and then FilmGimp) would converge later and that the core of GIMP 2.0 would support most of the features that were required for film editing (mainly 16-bit and floating point color channels). The user interface may have kept some differences due to the specific needs of film editors.

Unfortunately, for various reasons (political as well as technical), the gap between GIMP and FilmGimp widened a few months ago, soon after Robin Rowe took over the maintenance of FilmGimp and resurected the project that had not been very active in the last two years. There was some discussion about the fork on the GIMP developers mailing list in November and December last year (you can check the list archives here). The conclusion was that the FilmGimp developers were not interested in bringing their code closer to the current GIMP, and there are too few people working on GEGL (the library that should bring 16-bit and float channels into the GIMP) so it will still take a while before the main GIMP code is suitable for film editing. I am still sad about the way this whole thing happened. I tried to bring the two projects closer to each other, but obviously I failed.

I don't know how the future will look like. I wish the CinePaint developers good luck (honestly) and I hope that they will be successful. This fork of the GIMP suits the specific needs of the film industry and I hope that many studios will be able to use it and do great stuff with it. However, I expect that most people interested in photo editing, web design and general graphic editing will find that the GIMP is more suitable for them than CinePaint.

By the way, if you want to know some of the plans for the future of the GIMP, I suggest that you have a look at developer.gimp.org. In particular, read the plans for the future of the GIMP, posted in December 2000 but still valid. Besides this, the developers mailing list and the list of enhancements submitted to Bugzilla are good sources of information.

Umm ... I use GNOME at home and work, and enjoy it very much, but it's a far cry from beautiful.

Take a look at this site and this one. As far as GUI artwork goes, it's about the best I've ever seen. The OSX stuff may give it a run for its money, but the Microsoft folks can't offer anything close (obviously this is just my dumb opinion). Keep in mind that the truly "good" artwork hasn't really shown up until Gnome 2.0, and I think quite a bit of it is only packaged with 2.2 and beyond.

I've been trying to migrate people _away_ from windows, this only makes it easier for them to stay ;-)

I disagree. Take a longer term view. This makes it easier for them to leave Windows. Nothing happens overnight. And won't happen as quickly as I would like.

While so much noise and attention is being focused on Linux, I think the biggest threat to Microsoft is, once again, sneaking in under the radar. (Step 1: First they ignore you.) The biggest threat: cross-over applications. Stuff like OpenOffice. Or the GIMP. (And yes, I understand that GIMP is not a competitor to professional Photoshop users.)

It seems like more and more cross platform tools and toolkits are available. This was once the holy grail, and there were basically NO solutions. Now, a recent slashdot article reveals many ways to develop cross platform applications and gui's.

KDE and Qt are both being ported to Win32 (with GPL license). At some point, expect a flood of KDE applications, including another free KOffice suite, to be available for Windows. Other projects such as The Open CD and GNU Win II only help accellerate the acceptance of not only free, but open source applications by ordinary windows users.

Eventually, users recognize: hey the OS is irrelevant!

In the meantime, Linux on the desktop will have improved a great deal. Or instead, perhaps the recent RelaxOS?

gimp

Erm... Times New Roman, Arial and Courier New already have high-quality equivalents in OSS world: Times, Helvetica and Courier. There versions that come with XFree86 are crap, but there are high-quality Type1 versions of them available, made by URW. You can get them from the GIMP web page.

Okay, I'm not a typographer (just play one on Slashdot), so I think those just look good enough. =)

sure they do! afterall, photoshop is free isnt it?

Photoshop Elements is neither Free nor free, in fact it costs $100, but GIMP is just as powerful and is both Free and free.

linuxart.com - we have support here
gimp.org - how people get their ideas on a canvas
3dcomplex.com - example of art and science (applicably indiferent) applied to commerce
animefu.org - a great source of imported japanese art (Rob Malda agrees with me on this)

I have come in contact with many artists in my lifetime. I'm not a con-artitst, don't troll me on such subjective matter; I am hardly a Troll as my userID may recommend. One such artist, anchored in line-drawing Picaso-esque workmanship, replied to me his idea of what gives someone the ability to put images on a medium. Keep in mind, this man I spoke with, was actualy quite mentally ill and often spoke his mind to the world as if he were two individuals in one brain competing for the same mouth and united by one hand with a pencil. As I was stating, the man said there are two parts of his brain; one unable to think but upon stimulii, and another part that non-restrictivly co-ordinates his ideas to paper. Yes, he was quite mentally ill. This is a homeless artist, I may finally add. I spoke with a pharmacist on his "condition" and the pharmacists says it is the specialty that drives them insane, often over-thinking simple ideas and cannot function in life. Shaving and brushing teeth, as the pharmacist said, become a struggle to grasp reality of applying toothpaste to bristle upon teeth; they are all medically genius, with a slight impediment in each case that distrupts their thought completly. This homeless man, I kindly conceal the identity, is exceptional at artistry. Perhaps is there anyone else that may share if they have such a medical condition that allows them to excel in all things of art, yet have that "slight genius impediment" ? Glad to share my point-of-view; and I am not a troll.

I wasn't going to reply to this, but then I saw this little nugget.

You may already be aware, but just in case you're not, there are a few *nix equivalents for these "applications you can't live without":

WinAmp: Try XMMS. It does everything WinAmp does, plus several things it can't, and even looks and works the same (it is 100% skin-compatible with WinAmp). Of all the *nix equivalents, XMMS is probably the closest match. Home Page

Photoshop: Of course, everyone will tell you that The GIMP is a worthy replacement for Adobe's product. In practice, it lacks only a few high-end features (such as CMYK color separation) that professional users require; but for everyday use it's very close indeed. Try the Win32 port first, though, to help determine if it's right for you. Home Page

Flash MX: ...You've got me here. I don't think there's a single Flash solution for *nix, beyond the outdated Flash 5 plugin for Netscape/Mozilla. Anyone with better knowledge?

Nero: Believe it or not, Nero disc images are simply ISOs with a different TLA tacked on, so switching to Linux or another *nix doesn't require giving up the ability to use them. For CD burning and mastering, I've found cdrecord to be an excellent program, almost as easy to use as Nero, and unlike Nero I've yet to make a coaster with this thing. Excellent piece of software. Home Page

Exact Audio Copy: ...I admit it, I don't know what this program is - I've never heard of it. Thus, I can't give an alternative for it, I fear...

I agree. You should see some of the flames I get posting here, except they are all from Microturds and others who have nothing better to do than troll slashdot. Those IRC twerps are nobodies. Copetent people ignore trolls and do their best to help out the ignorant. Don't let them make you run screaming into Bill Gates' waiting embrace.

I keep seeing Photoshop mentioned. I've yet to use all the features the GIMP has. Have you tried it? You might look into the win32 version of it the next time you feel compelled to buy an new photoshop. The authors don't claim it's a replacement for photoshop, but it does what I need.

Outlook is huge and I'm sorry that you have to use it. My little Handspring Visor showed me how many useful features Outlook is missing despite it's size.

Digital camera image processing has moved to the 16-bit realm. That's what's keeping me on Windows, although not at all exclusively.

I don't discount The Gimp, but its strictly 8-bit in all its glory. FilmGimp is beginning to bridge that gap. In fact, it's a credible tool for manipulating 16-bit TIFs. In addition, the ImageMagick package does provide a number of tools for 16-bit TIF processing as well.

Still, I can't get a cutting edge sharpening or noise reduction algorithm for 16-bit TIFs in Linux.

What's available in Windows? Well, more than Photoshop. All sorts of little specialty apps. As an example, here's a free, but not open source sharpening application that draws its algorithms from bleeding-edge medical diagnostics imaging software, with sophisticated edge sharpening and halo controls.

Not only does it output 16-bit images, but intermediate calculations are done in 32-bit for superlative accuracy!

Is ImageMagick evolving in this direction? I hope so.

And what's the future of printer support for 16-bit images?