14 DAY TRIAL // GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program), an application that can be used as a simple paint program or as an expert quality photo retouching program, is now at version 2.8.12.
GIMP is one of the most prolific applications on the Linux platform, and it's one of the few that is probably installed by default in most of the Linux distributions available right now.
Unfortunately, the updates for GIMP don't arrive too often. In fact, the last update for this software was released back in November 2013. Since then, the developers have fixed a number of problems and now a new version has been released. It doesn't contain any new features, but it would be a good idea to update nonetheless.
The GIMP 2.8.x is one of the most of the important updates made for this application and it incorporates a huge number of changes and other various improvements. Many of the modification relate to the interface, but there is one in particular which stands out.
“GIMP 2.8 introduces an optional single-window mode. You can toggle between the default multi-window mode and the new single-window mode through the Single-window mode checkbox in the Windows menu. In single-window mode, GIMP will put dockable dialogs and images in a single, tabbed image window. The single-window mode setting is of course preserved if you quit and start GIMP again. Single-window mode removes the necessity for users of having to deal with multiple windows,” reads the official website.
According to the changelog, the brush sizes are now displayed correctly when they are used from plug-ins, the XCF loading is now more resistant against broken files, the widget direction now matches the GUI language, the option to disable the warning when closing a modified image has been fixed, the canvas overlay widgets (like the text options) for tablets have been fixed, and DND now works between images in one dockable.
Also, gimp_image_get_name() is now able to return the string used for the image title, the script-fu-server more secure by listening to 127.0.0.1 by default, a warning about changing the 127.0.0.1 IP is now provided, proper script-fu translations have been implemented, and numerous other bug fixes and changes made been added.
If you happen to use an Ubuntu system, getting the latest update for Gimp should be fairly easy. All you have to do is to enter these commands in a terminal:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gimp