Gimp, Graphics Image Manipulation Program, has always played 2nd fiddle to Adobe Photoshop. I remember when I was working at an apple shop when Adobe Photoshop 1 appeared and we used it on the monochrome screen of a mac SE thinking wow. Now Gimp has way surpassed that.

Recently, after some nasty malware related refreshing from backups on a windows laptop, I bought some PC parts. I threw together a desktop since now I have a family, house, home to work from. It ended up actually being 2 PCs in the end but that’s another story.

So as I started posting on this new install of wordpress – you are reading from here I was using Ubuntu linux on the downstairs PC. Running it on a TV, its a bit furry and I had just the stock installed basic photo/image program to adjust some graphics. I have tried gimp many times over the years but I saw Photogimp and some spanish text saying Adobe Photoshop, which I am much more used to … see image insert.

So I installed it and what do you know its all layed out like a modern photoshop. Now I can say for the first time – actually Gimp looks like its workable. Just like LibreOffice (formerly Open Office) is up to the task for editing documents.

Open source is basically able to surpass some of the older commercial software at this point. How could it be, well its the the idea that eventually instead of just moving stuff around and acting like you made it better when you really didn’t … or taking parts out and charging extra if you want them back. Well in Open Source you just find out what people really want and if they like it your variation of the code, fork, project becomes really appreciated and maybe others step in and help you make it even better. You aren’t trying to keep selling, or get subscriptions – perhaps you get donations but generally you can eventually after many years get the project to the point where it just does what people want and we can stop wasting our time paying and upgrading and re-learning some bullshit new version.

Now Ubuntu Itself falls into that category. You might love windows or macOS but in the end the only thing that really makes them superior other than basic look and feel (which can be duplicated) is that they have the stable support and drivers for all the computer parts you use as your PC. Yes and that means you too mac users – you use a PC with MacOS. Anyway, if I can put together a very recent set of parts and start a USB stick of Ubuntu and get sound video, software instantly (really, as fast as you can boot) then something is wrong on the older OS front. They stopped making their stuff better. Mac hasn’t written an installer for a long time, mostly they just chase a lot of security updates and hope they can retain customers. Its not all the way there yet – commercial software still rules a few areas but I’m going to work with linux now.

I was always just messing around as a kind of half serious thing on linux other than with servers. That’s another blog – but I think if I can invest my experience on linux as my work environment now its worthwhile. I recently heard someone say if you use windows you are an idiot – I almost agree. Especially when it comes to security concerns. Not that linux is immune – not at all but you have a lot more chance of securing it without fighting against the OS.