News, Tutorials, Howtos for Ubuntu Linux
GIMP, the popular free open-source image editor, announced the first release candidate for the next major 3.0 version on Wednesday.
So, what exactly is a “release candidate” (RC)? A release candidate is something that might be ready to be GIMP 3.0, but we want the larger community to test it first and report any problems they find.
According to the announcement, it’s time to try it out for those who are interested in the new release.
GIMP image editor announced the new 2.99.18 development release today. It’s marked as the last dev release for the next major 3.0 version.
The new release has a new welcome dialog, with Personalize tab to set your favorite theme, icon and font scaling, and select program language, Contribute tab with a few links for who want to contribute to GIMP, and Create tab with quick buttons to create, open, open recent images. It as well has an option to enable on every start.
GIMP image editor announced a new development release for next major 3.0 this Sunday!
It’s GIMP 2.99.16, the last release in the 2.99.x series. The release has finished the GTK+3 port. It adds ability to assign several shortcuts for a single action. And, the action search dialog also shows results’ own menu positions.
The GEGL engine has implemented filters as separate modules called “operations”, allowing 3rd party developers added their own filters to menu. And, custom filters (whether or not added to menu) will appear in the action search dialog.
The release also added new ‘Merge menu and title bar‘ option in ‘Preferences -> Image Windows’. This enable Gnome’s Client Side Decoration style that save vertical space.
Other changes in GIMP 2.99.16 include:
GIMP offers official Linux package through universal Flatpak that runs in sandbox.
For Ubuntu, first press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run the commands below one by one to get it.
sudo apt install flatpak
flatpak install --user https://flathub.org/beta-repo/appstream/org.gimp.GIMP.flatpakref
Once installed, either search for and launch it from ‘Activities’ overview.
Or run command flatpak run org.gimp.GIMP//beta to start it from terminal.
In addition for those who don’t like sandbox applications, keep an eye on this third-party Ubuntu PPA.
To remove the GIMP development package installed as Flatpak, open terminal and run command:
flatpak uninstall org.gimp.GIMP//beta
You may also run flatpak uninstall --unused to uninstall useless runtime libraries to free up disk space.
For those don’t like the Flatpak package, here’s how to install GIMP 2.99.18 from PPA in Ubuntu 20.04 and/or Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.
The popular GIMP image editor is working on the next major 3.0 release. For testing purpose, GIMP 2.99.18 was released as the latest development version. It provides the official Linux package via Flatpak package. However, some users don’t like it, since Flatpak is an universal package format needs separate daemon to run in sandbox.
For Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 22.04, and derivatives, e.g, Linux Mint 20/21 and Zorin OS 17, the unofficial PPA contains the classic .deb package for GIMP 3.0 Dev release.
NOTE: The package in the PPA is unstable. It may have bugs and used only for testing purpose. Installing GIMP from this PPA will override the 2.10 stable release, don’t install it on production machine.
Press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal, or search for and open terminal from start menu if you’re on Linux Mint or ZorinOS.
When terminal opens, copy and paste the command below and hit Run to add the PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mati75/gimp30
Type your password as sudo command need user authentication, and hit Enter to continue.
Since Ubuntu 20.04, it updates the system package cache automatically while adding Ubuntu PPAs, However, Linux Mint 20 does not. So you may need to manually run command in terminal to update cache:
sudo apt update
Finally, you can either open Software Updater (Update Manager) to install or upgrade the GIMP package, or run command in terminal instead:
sudo apt install gimp gegl
It’s possible to downgrade the image editor back to 2.10 stable release, 2.10.18 if no other relevant PPA added.
Simply open terminal and run the command below to install the ppa-purge package, and then purge the Ubuntu PPA which will remove it as well as downgrade installed packages:
sudo apt install ppa-purge && sudo ppa-purge ppa:mati75/gimp30
That’s all. Enjoy!
Before the next major GIMP 3.0, a new maintenance update for the 2.10 series GIMP 2.10.24 now is available to install.
Though it’s not officially announced at the moment of writing, GIMP has provided the 2.10.24 source tarball & Windows exe for downloading in its website.
And both the Flathub repository and unofficial Ubuntu PPA have updated the packages for the new release.
What’s new in GIMP 2.10.24 according to the release note:
If you’re OK with the flatpak package which runs in sandbox, open terminal and run following commands one by one to install it:
1. Firstly add PPA for updated Flatpak package (required for Ubuntu 18.04 only):
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:alexlarsson/flatpak && sudo apt update
2. Install flatpak daemon if you don’t have it:
sudo apt install flatpak
3. Add flathub repository which hosts the software packages:
flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
4. Finally install GIMP flatpak package via command:
flatpak install flathub org.gimp.GIMP
NOTE: as flatpak runs in sandbox, it takes much more disk space for run-time libraries.
5. (Optional) If you want to remove the package, run command:
flatpak uninstall org.gimp.GIMP
For those prefer the classic .deb packages, the unofficial PPA has made the new release packages for Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 20.10, and Ubuntu 21.04.
Due to compile issue, the package for Ubuntu 18.04 is stuck at v2.10.22 at the moment.
1.) Open terminal from system application launcher. When it opens, run command to add the PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/gimp
Type user password (no asterisk feedback) for sudo prompts and hit Enter to continue.
2.) If an old version of GIMP .deb package was installed, upgrade it via Software Updater (Update Manager) utility.
or run apt commands in terminal to install GIMP:
sudo apt install gimp
If you’re going to upgrade the image editor from command line, I’d recommend to RUN this command instead, so to also install the updated dependency libraries.
sudo apt upgrade
3.) (Optional) To restore GIMP to the stock version in main Ubuntu repository, run command to purge the PPA:
sudo apt install ppa-purge && sudo ppa-purge ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/gimp
For Ubuntu 18.04 users sticking to the PPA build of GIMP image editor 2.10.22, now the Python Script support is back.
Since old GTK2 and Python 2 libraries being removed from Ubuntu universe repositories, the Python script support was excluded due to lack of dependencies when I was uploading the GIMP packages into PPA.
Ubuntu 18.04 was neglected, though. It meets all the dependencies to build the requested feature. So I added it back. Hope it’s not too late for you :). And the package was totally built via the rules from otto-kesselgulasch’s PPA.
NOTE I do only basic image editing with GIMP, and I can’t go further test for the function though it seems working.
1.) Open terminal from system application launcher. When it opens, run command to add the PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/gimp
Type user password (no asterisk feedback) for sudo prompts and hit Enter to continue.
2.) If an old version of GIMP .deb package was installed, upgrade it via Software Updater (need to install gimp-python manually) utility.
or run apt commands in terminal to install GIMP:
sudo apt update sudo apt install gimp gimp-gmic gimp-python
If an old version was installed, it’s recommended to run sudo apt upgrade which will also update the required babl, gegl libraries.
To restore GIMP to the stock version in main Ubuntu repository, run command to purge the PPA:
sudo apt install ppa-purge && sudo ppa-purge ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/gimp
GIMP image editor 2.10.22 available to install in Ubuntu 18.04 and Ubuntu 20.04, though it’s not officially announced at the moment.
GIMP 2.10.22 was ready to download in its website last night. Release highlights in the new release inlcude:
The GIMP flatpak is recommended for Linux, and you can get it in flathub repository.
For those prefer installing deb package via apt, the unofficial PPA contains the packages for Ubuntu 18.04 and Ubuntu 20.04.
There’s known issue of the PPA packages: translations won’t install, so GIMP will always work in English.
1.) Open terminal from system application launcher. When it opens, run command to add the PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/gimp
Type user password (no asterisk feedback) for sudo prompts and hit Enter to continue.
2.) If an old version of GIMP .deb package was installed, upgrade it via Software Updater (Update Manager) utility.
or run apt commands in terminal to install GIMP:
sudo apt update sudo apt install gimp gimp-gmic
If an old version was installed, it’s recommended to run sudo apt upgrade which will also update the required babl, gegl libraries.
To restore GIMP to the stock version in main Ubuntu repository, run command to purge the PPA:
sudo apt install ppa-purge && sudo ppa-purge ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/gimp
GIMP image editor 2.10.20 was released a few days ago with some new features as well as important bug-fixes.
GIMP 2.10.20 release highlights according to the release note:
Ubuntu PPA:
It seems that the otto’s PPA is not being updated, while it’s still at v2.10.14.
Snap package:
The community maintained GIMP Snap package is still v2.10.18 at the moment. If you’ve installed it on your system, it will be auto-updated once the new package published.
Flatpak package:
GIMP 2.10.20 Flatpak package was made into flathub repository on June 7 once the source tarball was available. You can install it by running following commands one by one in terminal:
1.) Open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run command to install flatpak:
sudo apt install flatpak
2.) Add the flathub repository by running command:
flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
3.) Finally install GIMP flatpak via command:
flatpak install flathub org.gimp.GIMP
(Optional) To update installed GIMP Flatpak package, run command:
flatpak update org.gimp.GIMP
To remove GIMP flatpak package, run command:
flatpak uninstall org.gimp.GIMP
GIMP image editor 2.10.18 was released a day ago with new features and usability improvements. Here’s how to install it in Ubuntu.
Due to a critical bug, v2.10.16 was skipped and GIMP 2.10.18 was released with following release highlights:
Neither the PPA repository nor GIMP Snap package are updated to v2.10.18 at the moment of writing.
However, GIMP Flatpak package has been updated for Ubuntu 18.04 and higher. Simply open terminal from application menu and run following commands one by one:
sudo apt install flatpak
flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
flatpak install flathub org.gimp.GIMP
flatpak update flathub org.gimp.GIMP
GIMP Flatpak co-exists with Snap and native .deb packages. Run command to start it if you have more than one GIMP icon, and don’t know which one to run.
flatpak run org.gimp.GIMP
To remove the flatpak package, simply run command:
flatpak uninstall flathub org.gimp.GIMP
GIMP image editor 2.10.14 now is made into Ubuntu PPA, available for Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 19.04, Ubuntu 19.10, Linux Mint 19.x.
GIMP image editor 2.10.14 was released more than a week ago with following changes according to the release note:
Otto kesselgulasch updated the Ubuntu PPA today with the latest packages along with all dependency libraires.
1.) Open terminal either from application menu or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard. When it opens, run command to add the PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:otto-kesselgulasch/gimp
Type user password (no asterisk feedback) when it prompts and hit Enter to continue.
2.) If an old version was installed on your Ubuntu, upgrade it via Software Updater:
or simply run commands to install or upgrade GIMP:
sudo apt update && sudo apt install gimp
3. (Optional) For any reason, you can downgrade GIMP to the stock version by purging the Ubuntu PPA via command:
sudo apt install ppa-purge && sudo ppa-purge ppa:otto-kesselgulasch/gimp
Or you can manage the Ubuntu PPA via Software & Updates -> Other Software tab.
