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The latest developer snapshot of GIMP shows an app ready to evolve. I’ve never minded the interface or the separate windows, thanks to multiple desktops, but the interface overall looks promising and I’m very happy with where it is going. Most of my computer time lately has been for blogging and playing wow but I took some time to get GIMP 2.5 running to check it out. You can follow these instructions from My Science Is Better or skip all the work and get the deb file (alternative download links).
1. Install the packages needed to compile programs:
$ sudo apt-get install build-essential
2. Install gimp dependencies:
$ sudo apt-get build-dep gimp
3. Make binaries, includes, libraries in /opt/gimp-2.5 available for use:
$ export PATH=/opt/gimp-2.5/bin:$PATH
$ export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/gimp-2.5/lib
$ export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/opt/gimp-2.5/lib/pkgconfig
4. Install latest BABL and GEGL libs from source (these libs were not installed in step 2 as the gimp package in the repo is not depending on them)
4.1 Grab latest versions from SVN:
$ svn co http://svn.gnome.org/svn/babl/trunk/ babl
$ svn co http://svn.gnome.org/svn/gegl/trunk/ gegl
4.2 Install BABL:
$ cd babl
$ ./autogen.sh –prefix=/opt/gimp-2.5
$ make
$ sudo make install
$ cd ..
4.3 Install GEGL:
$ cd gegl
$ ./autogen.sh –prefix=/opt/gimp-2.5
$ make
$ sudo make install
$ cd ..
5. Grab GIMP 2.5 tarbal here: ftp://ftp.gimp.org/pub/gimp/v2.5/gimp-2.5.0.tar.bz2
$ wget ftp://ftp.gimp.org/pub/gimp/v2.5/gimp-2.5.0.tar.bz2
6. Extract and intall latest GIMP:
$ tar jxvf gimp-2.5.0.tar.bz2
$ cd gimp-2.5.0
$ ./configure –prefix=/opt/gimp-2.5
$ make
$ sudo make install
7. Enjoy your GIMP by running:
$ /opt/gimp-2.5/bin/gimp-2.5
I think the one window approach will benefit Windows users more than Linux users but it does unclutter things a little bit. You can only say so much about a developer snapshot so we’ll so how things develop with time.
