I don't wish to offend the Open Source fundamentalists, but do I read something between the lines about Photoshop installing and running on Ubuntu from now on? I am very dependent on Photoshop for my photography and have invested a lot of hours that I don't want to repeat learning a new and allegedly more difficult Open Source alternative. I am not keen on scaling ANOTHER learning curve with WINE, either. I'd like Photoshop and Photomatix to just work. I don't know how realistic this is without the manufacturers actually writing a native port, but if I knew I could use them both I'd wipe my Microschrott installations and go 100% Ubuntu this very evening. It really is the only thing in my way, and Ubuntu is, let's face it, an inspiration after years of misery with proprietary bloatware.

You need think about it. Despite the emails, the overwhelming evidence showing global warming is happening hasn't changed.
"The e-mails do nothing to undermine the very strong scientific consensus . . . that tells us the Earth is warming, that warming is largely a result of human activity," Jane Lubchenco, who heads the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told a House committee. She said that the e-mails don't cover data from NOAA and NASA, whose independent climate records show dramatic warming.

Look, I am a serious GIMP user and am VERY unimpressed by this move. I am one of the people who have found GIMP on their computer and then taking the time to learn how to use it.

you can always install it using sudo apt-get install gimp :)

Most people opposing removing the Gimp, mainly do so because they want to make sure people who *would* use it will still find it quickly.

One solution to this, which would also help people find all the other awesome software we have to offer, is going beyond just having recommended options in the package manager, but introducing people to them when they first open the desktop. I did these working html mockups in the Web Browser Widget on Kubuntu, but the same idea would apply equally to Ubuntu. This is almost completely implemented already just in the mockup and could just use apt-url. It also introduces people to more excellent software based on their interests, which we need to do anyway, and lets us free space on the disk at the same time. Win-win-win. :)

Mockups:

What categories are available?
http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/5836/suggest...

After clicking on one category:
http://img682.imageshack.us/img682/6502/suggest...

wtf!!

Removing gimp for some MonoCrap!!

I can think of a few holes, spots to put that F-spot in!

Gimp is also fine for simple things.
If space is such an issue, why not removing any photo applications?
Mono Sucks! It really does.
And is in no single area or combined better than gtk/kde-based apps because of it!
In fact, if Canonical needs a photo editor, let them choose something good, e.g. Solang.
But choosing another thing over the Gimp, nonsense.
Gimp 2.8 is going to have unified window and user interface improvements that should make Canonical rethink their strategy if it comes out early enough!

Useful information to put this decision in context:

http://popcon.ubuntu.com/by_vote
rank by vote means ranked by the number of people who use this package regularly according the the information being submitted by the popcon clients which are optin. This is NOT ranked by the number of installations. An installation ranking would be heavily biased by what was installed by default to the point of being useless.

rank: package: Notes:
96 openoffice.org-common -> arguably the highest ranked
-> end-user application
368 evolution
369 tomboy
384 rhythmbox
561 firefox-3.5 -> First instance of firefox
753 gimp
781 thunderbird -> Highest ranked non-default app?
846 pidgin
978 f-spot
1089 empathy
1647 banshee

So based on popcon statistics... is the argument to remove gimp justified? I'm not sure. It's more commonly used than f-spot or banshee but is that because of default app inertia? A lot of the highly ranked usage could be attributed to inertia associated with defaults. If gimp is dropped and f-spot is added.. I think it would be appropriate to come back and look at the popcon stats again in six months and see if f-spot moves ahead of gimp in the rankings. If it does not.. that would be an indication that gimp more important to the userbase than was assumed. Sometimes the only way you can really know what's important to keep is to take it away. It's easy to take the default apps for granted as being not so interesting. It's never easy making choices because of media size constraints.

-jef

i would say its ranked above f-spot because it is the default image editor

That would be a very stupid thing to do. Gimp is a very good application. I've used photoshop and Gimp for years on my Windows machines and ended up using Gimp only as it does everything I need and it is legal. It is the only not webbased application in Ubuntu that is really impressive in functionality and it helped me make my change from Windows to Ubuntu knowing it was there from the start.

What a super article... slash! Maybe you could have opened with the third paragraph: "Actually it means nothing big and I am sure it will not affect the users at all" and saved me the time.

If they are removing it to save space on the install disk, I really hope they don't use that space to fill it with more idiot crap. This change just increases the number of apps I always download on a fresh install and looks like it will add to the things I always remove.

I'm with devent - wtf is Tomboy for anyway? Useless pos

devent is right, ditching a gtk app in gnome and having a 50 megs framework to do note taking and an incomplete replacement of said gtk app is nonsense.
The insane thing is mistaking # of features for ease of use. Example, i do basic retouching of photos. Brightness, contrast, and... a gimp plugin, resynthesiser, that saves me lots of time when removing artifacts. I taught how to do that to complete newbies, they picked it up in no time. I'm using an algorhythm i don't understand with parameters i do not fully understand, and get the result EASY.

You know what else can be used to reduce disc space on the Live CD? Removing F-Spot and Tomboy, and with it the whole Mono stack. Keeping Gimp for F-Stop and Gnote for Tomboy.

GIMP was NOT removed from Fedora 12. I just installed F12 yesterday, GIMP included, from the DVD. What on earth gave you the idea GIMP wasn't in Fedora any more?

We are talking about the Live CDs here (the desktop editions) DVDs always include mst of the software :-)

Are you kidding me?

Just as Gimp is about to unveil 16 bit mode?

They aren't banning GIMP from Ubuntu, you can still install it with the package manager.

Not everyone needs the image editing power that GIMP offers, some just want to view images and that's it.