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by DIARRHEA_xd 1297 days ago
The biggest stain on FOSS, with the worst apologists, 27 years strong! Try drawing a circle, in the year 2022.
6 comments

> The biggest stain on FOSS

Pretty sure that program that is useful and usable, but not as much as you want, does not qualify for this description.

The GIMP project, while powerful, personifies all of the worst parts of OSS culture.

A needlessly polarizing/antagonizing name that they've refused to change? Check.

A user interface that no one but the developers could love or understand? Check.

A focus on knobs for users to tweak and being far behind the rest of the industry in basic usability improvements such as "auto levels" that have been table stakes for many years? Check.

Deflection of any criticism by saying "there's a plugin for that", when the plugin is probably locked in a filing cabinet in a basement closet with a sign saying "Beware of the Leopard" and another saying "only supported up to <6 versions ago>"? Check and check.

> there's a plugin for that

pushing the python2 interface over guile was a masterstroke

The beauty of the GPL is that you can change it to your heart's desire.

There is a fork called Glimpse.

https://glimpse-editor.org/

When Adobe hikes the prices to their SaaSS, you will still be welcome.

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-s...

How do you draw a circle using Glimpse?
select with a circle shape -> draw selection. Not as straightforward as possible, but still quite easy.
Alternatively, if you want a circle and not a disk, after filling the circular selection, shrink it by whatever thickness, and then delete.

But I have felt no need for drawing circles. Those should be done in Inkscape. I am not sure they should be in a photo processing app.

I use Gimp and Inkscape a few times per month, not professionally. But for silly graphics, I prefer Paintbrush[1].

I agree that for complex drawings where you should align multiple objects and be able to adjust the width and other properties of the color, it's better to use Inkscape.

But for throwaway screenshots with a big red arrow or a circle around the part I want to highlight, I prefer Paintbrush.

Is it possible to add to Gimp an option to draw simple forms like in Paintbrush? Perhaps as a filter or a tool. Gimp looks very customizable, but I never went into that rabbit hole.

[1] MS changed the name to "Paint" like 20 years ago, but I never got the memo.

> But for throwaway screenshots with a big red arrow or a circle around the part I want to highlight

On KDE, the Spectacle screenshot tool comes with an "annotate" button that does exactly this. I agree this kind of stuff is very convenient, bonus points with a touchscreen.

I use it to annotate screenshots also. But I have hand-drawn all my arrows and "circles" with the Brush tool.

If you want precision, you could use the "Paths" tool and then trace using a Brush.

I love this example, because while I used Photoshop and then GIMP for quite some hours, I never had to draw a circle once.
> worst apologists

> tell me you've never read a gnome bug report without ever saying it

GIMP is the personification of xxxx year of linux on desktop.