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Google Releases Picasa for Linux
chrisd writes "Hi, everyone. Today I'm pleased to announce that we're making Picasa, our photo management application, available for Linux. This is a pre-beta labs release and since we're still learning on how to best make software for Linux, we're asking that you submit your bugs as you find them. Picasa for Linux uses Wine internally; this shows a bit in the interface, but it works even better than we had hoped. Download it and check it out! A list of supported distributions can be found in the FAQ. We hope our patches to Wine will help make it easier for everyone to run Windows apps on Linux and other Unix-like systems. Thanks to our pals at CodeWeavers who did much of the heavy lifting, and to Marcus Meissner, whose libgphoto support patch was a welcome surprise."
So, use coral as your proxy :)
h tml
http://picasa.google.com.nyud.net:8080/linux/
http://picasa.google.com.nyud.net:8080/linux/faq.
Chris, looks good so far, big thanks.
liqbase
It's okay, we've already got plenty of pre-beta software. Have you seen SourceForge lately? Thanks. :o)
the layman's guide to computer science
First of all, http://picasa.google.com/linux/faq.html doesn't exist.
Didn't really get any further than that.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
No source code.
Step 1 - announce software
Step 2 - make all your links to software dead
Step 3 - Profit?
You can get the binaries directly (regardless of location) from these links:
c asa/picasa_2.2.2820-5_i386.deb
- 2.2.2820-5.i386.rpm
2 820-5.i386.bin
Deb: http://dl.google.com/linux/deb/pool/non-free/p/pi
RPM: http://dl.google.com/linux/rpm/stable/i386/picasa
Binary installer: http://dl.google.com/linux/standalone/picasa-2.2.
It's not a "fairly standard application" that we all take for granted. It's Google, a big corporation, openly and freely providing one of their major software applications for Linux (albeit using Wine). This does NOT happen very often, and we should bow down and praise those (Google) who do it! It's NOT just a "regular" software release.
ttuttle is a rankmaniac
libgphoto is an OSS library for interfacing with digital cameras. Marcus Meissner is a major Wine developer. Presumably, he wrote a patch that integrates libgphoto with Wine, thus enabling Picassa to download photos from digital cameras - a neccessary feature that would not have otherwise been available as part of the Wine API.
Is it me or has Gooogle disappeared? Wouldn't have thought that the 3 linux users starting a download could have caused that... :-)
Wine is not emulation. Its an API. Its no different then any other linux app. No different then chosing QT over GTK or any thing else. Whats wrong with coding to a cross platform library?
One or two problems remain (and I'm sure more will pop up after I play with it for more than 10 minutes). It doesn't integrate into any desktop environment at all - its very much a Windows application hacked to bits so it runs smoothly in Linux, and it shows at points. With the exception of Desktop, it does not remember stored folders from either Konqueror or Nautilus, and maintains meaningless links to "My Documents", "My Pictures", "My Music" and other folders which don't exist in the file requesters. This could use some work.
Wine is an implementation of the Windows API. It is not an emulator of any kind. It enables code written using it to run natively on non-Microsoft platforms. By extension of your logic it would seem that any application written using a library "intended" for use in the Linux world (such as Gaim and GTK+) cannot be considered "native" to Windows when ported to it, but this is clearly not the case. Using Wine may not be the nicest way to develop an application from the ground-up for Linux, but if it works, it works. What Google has released is indeed a native Linux application. Furthermore they have obviously made an extensive effort to improve both the code of Picasa and of Wine to address any bugs in Wine that might have resulted in poor performance.
According to Brian Proffitt on Linux Today, when asked if additions to WINE could help porting Google Earth, DiBona said that Google Earth uses Qt and GL and so additional WINE support would not help.
Anand Rangarajan anand@cise.ufl.edu
Google funded 225 WINE patches. How many people who won't even use Picasa will benefit from that? IMHO, that's more important than Google releasing a package that lets Picasa run on Linux.
Why announce a fairly standard application on /.? Surely Freshmeat would be a better forum?
Because it's from GOOGLE.
Slashdot:
News about Google. Stuff about Google that matters. Google, Google. Google.
Software Wars
it's quite interestinga y/047806.html
http://www.winehq.com/pipermail/wine-devel/2006-M
Why is the Linux version restricted to the US only?
US Export restrictions.
Land of the Free, except when you try to get stuff out.
May the Maths Be with you!
Of course, the Picasa for Linux product is far more tailored for Linux than that would be; it doesn't give you drive letters, it knows how to integrate into your file system, it knows how to connect to your desktop environment; it has a whole raft of other Linux specific features. I think it's even reasonable to hope that as it matures, it will become even more fully tailored to Linux.
But the bottom line is simple - try it. You may be surprised at how handy it is. And today you have one more application on Linux than you had yesterday. I'm not sure how anyone can be upset by that.
Cheers,
Jeremy
Why?
If this installs and runs easily on Linux, why does it matter whether it's a 'native port' or some other hoops and tricks method? If it installs and runs, the that counts as released for linux.
One of the biggest prospects for Linux's wide-scale adoption will be the ability to run programs designed for Windows. If the end result of Wine's development is that programs only need written once and then can either use a customised Wine to run under Linux, or slot into a supported, pre-installed and easy to use version of Wine (like Crossover Office or Cadega), then that counts as a better conclusion in terms of getting all vital software running on Linux than requiring a complete re-write of every app we want which, let's face it, will never happen.
I've used Linux for over 2 years as my primary operating system. 2 months ago, I installed Microsoft Office via Crossover Office. It works as well as under Windows, installed as easily as under Windows thanks to Crossover's fine work, and has given me no problems. Although I still use Openoffice for most things, I have software in Access that I am currently porting to an Apache/PHP/MySQL system to which I need access from Linux. Plus, compared to 'Impress', Powerpoint is a breath of fresh air in terms of usability.
Wine provides the promise to be able to run any software on Linux. Where's the problem when companies like Google take advantage of that to release software they wouldn't otherwise have the time or manpower to re-write?
Is crushing a suspect's child's testicles illegal?
John Yoo: "No, [if] the President thinks he needs to do that."
This announcement has very little to do with Picassa.
Read between the lines (or even one particular line, explicitly): OUR patches to wine.
Google, which has a proven track-record of success when they start off in some strange new direction, has taken on the task of making Wine work better.
Think about that for a minute, and you'll get the "big" news here.
From your comments I would venture you have not. It is extremely well-polished and as stable as the Windows version.
/var/opt/picasa with permissions 1777, and Picasa will use a subdirectory of that instead of ~/.picasa. See the comments in /opt/picasa/bin/wrapper.
really? what crack are you smoking. I have tried it and I have ran into some of the below released bugs that the Picasa guys admit to.
# You can't backup pictures or burn CDs
# The system tray does not close with loss of focus
If you bring up the media detector menu, you have to either start picasa or stop the media detector to get the menu to go away.
# If you have a remote home directory, the performance may be poor. Picasa uses many small files in the ~/.picasa directory, and if the home directory is slow, then Picasa will be slow. Picasa will warn you if it detects your home directory is on NFS. To work around this, you can create the directory
# Picasa notices don't stay on a given desktop.
Picasa pops up notices to let you know it's found new photos or has added photos to its library. These notices come on the current desktop; some users would rather they stayed on the same desktop that Picasa itself was on.
# On Ubuntu 5.10, the 'Ctrl-K' shortcut for keywords doesn't behave correctly.
Using the menu works correctly.
# Dual head video cards don't work properly with Picasa for slideshows and timelines and so operate in a fallback mode.
# Blogging - the palette selector is truncated.
You can't change colors of text while posting to your blog.
# Music playback during slideshow doesn't work
# The opening Picasa dialog has a spin loop and consumes a lot of CPU
# We do not support browsing to hidden directories
Funny I dont have those problems in the Windows version.
You must be a microsoft developer to consider picasa "It is extremely well-polished and as stable as the Windows version." with some of those big show stoppers in there.
The first one on the list is a major show stopper for me and nearly 50% of picasa users.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Many digital cameras do not support a mass storage mode as you describe and can only operate using the Picture Transfer Protocol (PTP), which also supports some more advanced features like remote-shooting (but Picasa doesn't support any of those). For this reason, libgphoto is very useful for Picasa because it provides the PTP communication layer that enables support for a much wider array of cameras.
In this fashion it is absolutely no different than if the app linked to GTK or QT to release a "native" version. It is native. It is compiled for and runs under Linux without any API emulators or ABI interfaces required. That is the definition of a native application.
Actually... from this post on the Wine devel mailing listCan anyone confirm that the Windows and Linux binary are identical? If true it should be read as Google pays Codeweavers to fix Wine to run Picasa. Which I guess is still a good thing.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
It's been fixed in CVS.
Well this is one of the scariest things i've ever had to witness on my process list in recent times...
A lot of applications don't really integrate well into the desktop, there's not much new about that. But people still use them. They all have to use their own widgets. QuickTime, MSOffice, WinAMP, MusicMatch JukeBox, Windows Media Player... even PhotoShop doesn't integrate well in Windows, FireFox struggles to integrate well with desktop environments other than Gnome (but is doing a better job than most cross-platform apps), etc...
Twinstiq, game news
Windows version
md5sum Picasa.exe:
b8806a095619d3327e7e415af8b72d48 *Picasa2.exe
Linux version
md5sum
b8806a095619d3327e7e415af8b72d48
Yeah, its pretty much the same.
True, but that's not what they're doing. They're using winelib, which is a native Linux/X toolkit. It only just happens to behave very similarly to the Windows API.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Google have no obligations to the Linux/OSS communities, period. The fact that they've invested so much time, money and effort into not only their own Linux app, but also back to the Wine community should be applauded. Nobody is forcing you to use this. Don't like the way they've done it? Don't use it.
Seriously, give them a break. They're making baby steps in the right direction. They've released what, a pre-beta via their labs? And so many people on Slashdot are expecting it to be a polished product... that's just wrong. Their forte is definitely not Linux desktop apps, but from the sounds of things, they certainly want to improve. Oh shock! They're not there on day 1. Or day 2. Well, Linux wasn't written in a day, nor were the plethora of other desktop apps for Linux.
Let's not forget the human factor. Those programmers that worked on getting Picasa running on Google I'm sure would love some positive feedback to encourage them to continue working hard on it. I know I would. They're probably also unhappy that this pre-beta version isn't 'up to par' with the Windows version, but they're working on improving that. Reading their FAQ endeared the team that did this to me.
As for Wine usage. Big deal. It's not like they're charging you $69 for the app. It works, and they aim to improve it. Sounds to me like they had a hard time trying to get it to work on so many different distros, instead of just say.. Red Hat. This project was only announced 4-5 months ago. Let's hope to see Google Earth before Christmas!
This space for rent.
I am not impressed. I installed this thing and it tells me that my pictures are located in Y:\pics instead of ~/pics. Also, it is too stupid to realize that the simlink on the desktop is the same directory and it indexes everything twice. Stupid!
Second, Windows has several methods to interface with digital cameras. One of the is direct filesystem access (works just fine). The second is TWAIN. Originally just for scanners it is also used for digital cameras. On third, WIA (Windows Imaging Architecture).
WINE already had a TWAIN implementation (written by Corel during WordPerfect 2000 times) but it was only able to use SANE, and not really able to use libgphoto2 in a good way.
So what I did was to just add the lowlevel libgphoto TWAIN driver to WINE, and CodeWeavers provided a gphoto Import GUI for it. My part of work was small compared to the stuff the CodeWeavers people did.
Voila - importing from any kind of cameras into Picasa.
Btw, I think all of this is in regular WINE 0.9.14.
Ciao, Marcus