Sunday, June 27, 2010

GIMP 2.6.9 Available for Linux..sort of

I was perusing the open source software related news this morning trying to wake up and came across an item at Tech Drive-in called Install New GIMP 2.6.9 in Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx. I know that GIMP 2.7.0 is the next stable version to be released and understood that it wasn't going to become available until the end of 2010 or the beginning of 2011. What's GIMP 2.6.9 have to offer?

According to the GIMP.org website:
It's been a while since the last release. Quite a few bug-fixes have piled up in the stable branch, so here's another release in the stable GIMP 2.6 series.
There are just a ton of bug fixes included in 2.6.9 for a wide variety of languages. The full details are at developer.gimp.org. Should you be concerned? Probably not. I haven't found GIMP 2.4.6 to be in such a condition that I've been dying for an upgrade. Also, the option to use synaptic (and thus apt-get) to perform such an upgrade on my Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy Heron) computer doesn't exist (no, I haven't gotten around to upgrading to Lynx, yet).

Even for the Lucid Lynx, you have to jump through a few minor hoops to install GIMP 2.6.9 and unless you really need the bug fixes listed, it's probably not going to change your GIMP experience appreciably if at all.

Not sure if I could make the 2.6.9 upgrade option available for my current version of Ubuntu or if I should care. I know I could download the 2.6.9 tarball and install that way, but I prefer to use apt-get/synaptic to manage my applications.

I checked and for Windows using the Windows installer, the latest version of GIMP available for immediate download is 2.6.8...close, but no cigar.

The interesting news is that 2.6.9 was released on June 23rd, making it the first release of any version of GIMP since last December. Looking forward to GIMP 2.7.0 in another six months.

7 comments:

  1. Actually 2.7 is not a stable release because it's an odd numbered release, only even numbers are stable, hence 2.2, 2.4, 2.6. And the Windows installer is available on Sourceforge.net http://sourceforge.net/projects/gimp-win/ :)

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  2. Well you shouldn't have used a distro that is usually slow in updating its main repository

    My distro had Gimp 2.6.9 available right after it was released adn since its a rolling release you never have to reinstall. Just "REload" "Mark all upgrades" "Apply" in synaptic and you are running the latest version.

    I also got firefox 3.6.4 this way.

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  3. What is your point with this "article" and how would you know what it takes to upgrade Gimp in 10.04 since you are only using Ubuntu 8.04?

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  4. I posted a link to the source article describing how to install GIMP 2.6.9 in Lynx. Decided to explore the latest version to see if it would be worthwhile to update or wait for 2.7.

    This is just one blog among millions. It doesn't have to be "deathless prose" each time I write. It's OK if you don't see my point, but then, you don't have to read my blog if you object, either.

    Thanks for sharing.

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  5. 2.7.0 isn't the next stable release, the 2.7 series is a development series towards 2.8.0.

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  6. My bad. Keyboarding too fast. Thanks.

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  7. @Anonymous I think I said that. ;P

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