Linux Blog Aggregator

I’m no graphics professional, but like probably most of you, I do need to edit photos from time to time. I used Adobe Photoshop before since it is the most widely used image manipulating software. But when I started using Linux, things changed.

Since GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is included by default in most Linux distros, I had no other choice but to try it. I then became more and more comfortable using it that I completely forgot about Photoshop. I know that I can still install Photoshop in Linux through software virtualization, but no thanks.

Here are my reasons why I made the switch and why I think GIMP is better than Photoshop:

1. GIMP has a simple and easy to use Graphical User Interface compared to a more cluttered working environment in Photoshop.

2. GIMP has a way lighter footprint than Photoshop. You don’t need plenty of disk space to install GIMP. The size of Gimp’s installer is less than 20MB; Photoshop could be around 600MB.

3. GIMP is wicked fast. The minimum recommended RAM requirement to run GIMP is only 128MB. The latest version of Photoshop will probably need 512MB at minimum.

4. GIMP has the right amount of essential features that I need. I think Photoshop is way too bloated and some of its included features are unnecessary.

5. GIMP can read and write most Photoshop native PSD format files, but Photoshop does not support GIMP’s native XCF file format.

6. GIMP has a more powerful automation than Photoshop.

7. GIMP’s open development model means that it is much more readily available on more operating systems, plugin development is not limited by developers and as such has no need to compete with Photoshop; by comparison, access to Adobe Photoshop’s SDK requires authorization.

8. GIMP is available at no cost compared to Photoshop’s hefty price tag.

How about you? Do you also feel that GIMP is better than Adobe Photoshop?

- by Jun Auza

Joe muses about Xlib and connection aborts. Two things:

Yes, libX11 is going away. It's unfixably broken (not only is the implementation utterly horrendous, but the concept is exactly what toolkits don't want), and we can't change existing behaviours because libX11 is just one of those API/ABIs you cannot break.

Yes, the ability to recover from connection aborts is essential. D-BUS is broken in the exact same way, yet some people feel inclined to defend it (e.g. mandating reboots when either of the D-BUS daemon, or libdbus, are upgraded; advocating segfaults in client applications when the bus dies as the right thing to do?!?). I don't think either behaviour is in the least bit sensible, and it would be really keen if both could be fixed (by using XCB in toolkits for the former, by fixing libdbus to be less obnoxious for the latter).

Just sitting in Vienna airport now on my way back from GUADEC 2006. Got some really good and productive hacking done, pimped the Maemo platform from our stand, ate tapas, drank sangria, and drank beer on the Mediterranean, sifting the sand through my fingers before just jumping in. There was also some kind of conference arrangement going on, which was quite good.

Was also great to meet all the crew, old and new, including some of the fellow Nokia crew I met for the first time either in the bungalows or on the stand.

The advantages of being in Catalunya soon became clear as well (if they weren't already), when the bartender started bringing us free drinks -- shots of some kind of something or other which was utterly incredible -- and taking photos of all of us, either because we were buying lots of drinks, because he liked Jono's beard, or because Bastien and one of the VMWare dudes showed up to cheer loudly for France in the soccer, Bastien with his French shirt on. Took a bunch of pictures when I went to Barcelona which I'll upload at some stage; hijacked Ross's DSLR for a while too, and managed to take about two hundred pictures of the same peoples' heads, half of them out of focus.

The food varied from great to gold-plated, diamond-embezzled, awesome, of course. The only real complaint was the absolutely oppressive heat; not even as bad as Melbourne in summer, but still oh-my-god-I'm-dying-how-long-till-I-get-back-to-Helsinki.

Thanks for a fantastic conference, Quim and team!

Since all the cool kids are doing it, here are some of the more interesting stats from the Google analysis tools. The third most popular search term used to hit my site has been 'jdub' of late, which is a bit worrying. Number five is 'scandinavian window systems' (?), number fifteen is 'abortions', number seventeen is 'word up for hilltop hoods' (okay, I share the sentiment, but will Googling for it really be that useful?), and number eighteen is 'bluetooth beatbox', which really defies explanation beyond being a googlewhack, but it's not even that.

The mind boggles. At least it's not quite as odd as when I maintained a very large, Google-indexed, IRC quotes file.

So, thanks to the effort of our fearless team, new Xorg hotness is available, and even brings those blue sparks. You might note that this is a mere five months after X11R7.0, and note the 7.2 release plans, which have us releasing X11R7.2 in a mere six months. We're back. Oh yes, we are back.

xf86Init.c in OpenBSD:
Fri Mar 10 17:29:51 2006 UTC (7 weeks, 5 days ago) by deraadt
proper geteuid calls because suse hires people who mistype things

I don't know what went wrong in Theo's life to make him such a whiny, raving sociopath, but I, for one, have had about enough with the sort of behaviour I wouldn't accept from my seven-year old sister, let alone someone who's allegedly old enough to know better. Grow up, Theo.

Everyone on #xorg-devel has seen me harassing people about our current stats with bugs. If anyone with knowledge of the X codebase felt like coming in and doing a bunch of really painful, unrewarding, triage work, it'd be massively appreciated. That NEW line should really continue plummeting down! On that note, I'd like to publicly big up Erik Andren in particular, for doing a ton of awesome triage work so far to help us get that graph down, and help beat our Bugzilla into something usable that helps us, rather than its current awfulness.

No thanks. Especially when distributing kernel images without the corresponding source is surely against this whole GPL thing. Great example to set to vendors: 'I'd give you the source to our kernel modifications to get Linux up and running on this wireless router, but it'll cost you'.

Credit where credit's due:

Hello Daniel,

Thank you for writing in. My personal apologies for what happened, this is
not allowed behavior here at Google and this email was mistakenly sent to
you. Mistakes happen but we're sorry that this particular mistake
happened, unsolicited email is not acceptable. If you have any further
questions, please do not hesitate to email us.

Sincerely,

Sam

The Google Base Team

If this means that Google are stopping Google Base spam completely now, more power to them.

We found this e-mail address from the public Google search results.

Can someone please explain to me how spamming public lists is somehow compatible with Google's stated 'don't be evil' ethos? freedesktop@l.fd.o wasn't the only list to get hit. Very disconcerting.

So, dear Google,
What gives?
Daniel

Update: Yes, I checked the headers, it's definitely Google:
Received: from smtp-out.google.com (smtp-out.google.com [216.239.45.12])
by gabe.freedesktop.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8EA189E72E
for <freedesktop@freedesktop.org>; Mon, 14 Aug 2006 16:53:29 -0700 (PDT)

Update #2: No, it wasn't a joe-job. And hopefully that'll be the last one they send.