GIMP Releases Last Development Version For GIMP 3.0

[kpedersen]

Funny, how they are finishing porting Gimp to GTK 3 which is already almost obsolete, because there is GTK 4 and the last major GTK 3 release was autumn 2018 (GTK 3.24) which is currently maintained as LTS release.

LSB does currently dictate GTK3.

Gotta follow them standards!

[prokoudine]

Even though I definitely acknowledge the fact that the have (very) limited resources (compared to most companies) I'm a bit surprised at the fact that they mix GTK3 porting (i.e. the Gimp 2.x -> *3.x* shift) with so much feature development.

GIMP development is basically this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbSehcT19u0

They start changing something, run into old ugly code, start refactoring that instead, then run into something new. It never truly ends.

There are ways to deal with this. Let's see if they manage to reorganize themselves when they launch a non-profit.

[JPFSanders]

GIMP development is basically this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbSehcT19u0

They start changing something, run into old ugly code, start re-factoring that instead, then run into something new. It never truly ends.

There are ways to deal with this. Let's see if they manage to reorganize themselves when they launch a non-profit.

This is true to a degree, mostly applies to the GTK 3 port, GIMP has always been lacking manpower, they embarked in a profound rewrite of the "internal guts" so they could for example add support for more colour spaces, non-destructive editing, etc and this was a huge undertaking.

IMHO where they made a huge mistake has been on the Python support, a lot of the best plug-ins require Python 2.x support which most distros have phased out for years now and Gimp 2.x doesn't support Python 3.x

Hopefully now that the big architecture changes are done they can release more frequent incremental versions.

I know it can't compete toe to toe with Photoshop but I think that GIMP is of extreme importance to the Linux platform and it is a very underrated program.

[ssokolow]

As much as I applaud them for their efforts, GNOME has been making it such a hassle to make non-GNOME GTK+ apps feel native on non-GNOME desktops (eg. GTK 3's menu drop shadows that KDE's Breeze-GTK3 theme is apparently powerless to remove, which turn into giant black borders whenever something is fullscreened on another monitor and KWin suspends compositing mid-execution to boost its performance) that, for me, this is a signal that I need to stop procrastinating investigating whether Krita can meet the needs I currently service with GIMP.

(It's bad enough that I just have to grin and bear it with Inkscape.)

[prokoudine]

This is true to a degree, mostly applies to the GTK 3 port,

It applies to much more than that. I watched that, er, from the first row for the past 15+ years It's a neverending run between refactoring efforts, trying to please everyone rather than focusing on less feature requests, scratching your own itches, and bugfixing. When you don't have a large team, spreading yourself that thin is how you end up with 6 years long dev cycles.

GIMP has always been lacking manpower, they embarked in a profound rewrite of the "internal guts" so they could for example add support for more colour spaces, non-destructive editing, etc and this was a huge undertaking.

True. But there's much more to refactoring than that.

IMHO where they made a huge mistake has been on the Python support, a lot of the best plug-ins require Python 2.x support which most distros have phased out for years now and Gimp 2.x doesn't support Python 3.x

Sorry, I don't get your point. Python 2.x has been indeed phased out of most distros out there. So what do you think they should have done?

[Britoid]

LSB does currently dictate GTK3.

Gotta follow them standards!

LSB is long dead, replaced and inferior to containers.

I really hope before GIMP does a GTK4 port that they focus on fixing the UI instead, it's a mess that doesn't do well to show off GIMPs powerful featureset.

[byteabit]

The GIMP 3 version is more than just porting to GTK3. There is the GEGL backbone, the new color management, new plugin system, non destructive features, support for Wayland and a few more that are important. They lay the ground to build on. As people said, the port to a newer GTK version will be easier, as they do not need to rebuild all other important parts anymore.

[SpyroRyder]

LSB is long dead, replaced and inferior to containers.

I really hope before GIMP does a GTK4 port that they focus on fixing the UI instead, it's a mess that doesn't do well to show off GIMPs powerful featureset.

Best way to ensure this is probably to jokn the discussions within the project. Theres like 3 guys running the entire thing, someone coming in with a slightly open mind and well reasoned idea could probably go far.

[SyXbiT]

Just tell us when it's final. How many more dev releases.
2.999999999999999. Give me a break.

[caligula]

When the work on upgrading the toollkit in GIMP started, there was only GTK3. GIMP is a project with limited resources, and they have stated no current plans to put those resources into a GTK4 uplift, and have even suggested they might wait for GTK5 to be released before they consider such an change (skipping GTK4 entirely).

This means the next port would also take years. Gtk2 -> gtk3 = 10 years, gtk3 -> gtk4 maybe 5-6. Gtk3 -> gtk5 at least 10 again.