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Hmmmm, OK, it's hard to install on Windows. In the first place, you're installing a piece of cross-platform software (try installing a Windows program on Linux and running it with WINE sometime. Fun!). In the second place, I can remember plenty of programs on Windows that needed special versions of ActiveX or dll's that I had to go chase down. I have no idea why this is a specific problem that just Gimp has. I would definitely advise using live CD's (I can only think of about five Linux distros that *don't* include Gimp. Even FreeSBIE, a BSD distro, has Gimp.): no install problems that way, and you can save your work to writable media. But granted, the Gimp team should get their installer to do it in one whack... they're probably thinking too much of Linux package management, where it all gets installed from one command, regardless of what you have and what it depends on. Once again, Gimp is blamed for problems that it turns out are just as much the fault of the non-native host system.

Just about the rest of your refutations fall mostly apart. Alpha channel handling doesn't confuse me, regardless of whether it's in Gimp, Cinepaint, Image Magick, or SDL programming. It's termed "transparency" in the menus. You want to click with the left-mouse button instead of the right, is that it? Or you want that Gimp derivative somebody's writing that does the menus the exact way PS is laid out? (I forget what it's called, and I'm sick of Googling today. It was covered on Slashdot a while back.) And Windows COM scripting...you DO know that FOSS has programming languages Windows never even can dream of hosting, right? Meanwhile, if the FOSS world tries to make a move for DOM, either it will get patented (or is it already?), or GNU will get sued for another look-n-feel number, or they'll just add a new beanie feature and PS will be one feature ahead of Gimp again and then Gimp-vs-PS will rage on for another version because Gimp doesn't have beanies.

Don't tell me you want to get me started on the features missing in Windows and Adobe that GNU, Linux, BSD, Solaris, and even plan9 from Bell Labs have. I haven't that long to live! But thank you anyway. This tells me something: the problems with Gimp that everybody complains about are actually problems with the *Windows* port of Gimp. Here's a good catch-all: Try Mediainlinux, see if you can get that downloaded and burned and running. It includes more image-editing tools than even *I* can remember, it runs live so you have nothing to worry about on installing, and it will expose you to more than *one* FOSS program, so you can get a better idea of this Unix-based thing, which, by the way, was thriving for years before Bill Gates ever *touched* a computer. Consider that pictures like this, this, and this were done from scratch using only the same tools you get on Mediainlinux. Surely, *somebody* can get use out of these tools, eh?

As for Cinepaint, I'm going out on an extremely short limb and guess that you've never run it. I have. I've run more programs than you could count. Cinepaint, included in say, for instance, MediainLinux IS Gimp, with fewer plugins and 8/16/32-bit support and a sexier name (since everybody harps on the name). Same interface, same menus, same multiple windows everybody harps on. I addressed all that you bring up in this post, and considered it too bleeding obvious to repeat.

You can get one point back if you can even tell me the origins of the term "LART".

http://www.mediainlinux.org/index.php/mediainlinux /documentation/galleries/mediainlinux_3_screenshot s/blender There's your blender.

Well, I could point to *plenty* of things that you can do in only one operating system. You can only use appletalk on an Apple network. You can only use QBASIC on a Microsoft. You can only compile a tarball built with an IMakefile on BSD. You can only use apt-get on a Debian system. You can only use multi-threading on a POSIX-compliant system. Yadda, yadda. Doesn't inherently make anything superior to anything else. You're pointing to one instance of profession-specific functionality. In point of fact, there is a Gimp plugin project: http://www.blackfiveservices.co.uk/separate.shtml it seems to be getting some attention http://nashi.altmuehlnet.de/pipermail/scribus/2003 -July/001415.html, but, hey, I don't type-set for newspapers so who knows if it's any good?

But I know this from my years of Linux use: There's no such thing as a problem that only one person's encountered. No matter how intricate your solution, there is at least one person who has searched for it before. Some people search, and give up, others search and, finding nothing, hack up their own solution. If it works in a big way, they post it for others to use. That's how it all started! I always figured, better to have the tools to do it myself, than pay somebody else to do it for me. PS: Gimp is certainly not the only graphics program on the Linux desktop, try researching http://www.mediainlinux.org/ MediainLinux live CD, a distro made specifically for media content creators in graphics, audio, and streaming media. Check their package list, see if you can Google about one of their programs and maybe it'll turn out to be what you need.

for linux -> getting alsa and JACK running together correctly is a nightmare.


You are right. I was having such a hard time with alsa and JACK that I said "screw it", and got MediaLinux 2. (Purchased my copy from Linuxcd.org because I don't have broadband)