GIMP 3.0 has been more than one decade in the making as the port from GTK2 to GTK3, also transitioning away from Python 2 to Python 3 support, and a wealth of other improvements from the UI to lower down into enhancing this open-source Photoshop alternative.
The GIMP project announced on X/Twitter today that they have entered the string freeze for this much anticipated release.
@user68k I think this will be the first GTK3 app that will have an actual options menu instead of a tucked away hamburger menu with options. I think it’s gonna be interesting.
That’s great! Now if only they’d stop thinking disability is funny, they might have a program worth using!
Some people are so addicted to anger that they’ll shoot themselves in the foot just so they’ll have something to complain about.
“The gimp” is a character from Pulp Fiction. You’re imagining things and refusing to use a powerful tool in response to that imagined slight.
I’ve heard the term used reffering the fetish about 3000x more than I’ve heard it used referring to a disability
Even if that’s the case, that still makes it an immature name for what should be a serious project, because I doubt they’ve ever seriously engaged with the concept outside of them naming their project that, hey that’s an idea!
Like, I don’t mind fun. But as someone into kink too, the name of a project shouldn’t invoke anything to do with either ableism or BDSM, especially since kink is not understood by most people correctly, unless a project is related to kink in some way, or ableism (which I’m going to seriously be suspicious of your project and motivations unless you’re disabled and are reclaiming it) it’s still a very bad name that doesn’t really explain anything about it at a glance/first hearing it.
Should WINE change its name since it can invoke imagery of debauchery and alcoholism? Or are we going to leave that one out of this idea of sanitizing names.
I don’t fly on planes because the automatic voice system on the cockpit says “retard”
What are you trying to prove here? They were asked to change it because it’s ableist and they said no because it’s funny. Giving me a definition does not refute that.
Do you have evidence of that? That’s not what I saw: https://www.gimp.org/docs/userfaq.html#i-dont-like-the-name-gimp-will-you-change-it
I don’t like the name GIMP. Will you change it?
With all due respect, no. We’ve been using the name GIMP for more than 20 years and it’s widely known. The name was originally (and remains) an acronym; although the word “gimp” can be used offensively in some cultures, that is not our intent. On top of that, we feel that in the long run, sterilization of language will do more harm than good. GIMP has been quite popular for a long time in search engine results compared to the use of the word “gimp”. So we think we are on the right track to make a positive change and make “gimp” something people actually feel good about. Especially if we add all the features we’ve been meaning to implement and fix the user interface. Finally, if you still have strong feelings about the name “GIMP”, you should feel free to promote the use of the long form GNU Image Manipulation Program or exercise your software freedom to fork and rebrand GIMP.
This seems like a good official message to have, and personally I think they are making the right call. As someone in my early 20s, I can say that at least in the area I grew up (pacific north west of USA) “gimp” as a derogatory term is not widely used or known among my peers. In fact it didn’t even occur to me that I knew a second usage for the word until I read a comment on reddit a few years ago. My response then was “Oh yeah I guess I’ve heard that word used in that way before, maybe in a movie?”, and to be honest I feel the same way now. I believe “gimp is on its way out as a term to put down others, and I’m much more familiar with the term GIMP in reference to the useful program that this post is about.
Most people here (who didn’t grow up in the US 50+ years ago) wouldn’t give negative connotations to the software’s name. I’m on the side that it is well divorced of an ableist meaning but that’s where the disagreement lies and some people are making a big fuss over.
Should we stop using words like taser and amok as well for having historically racist associations despite being divorces of those meaning? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Swift_and_His_Electric_Rifle
Our language is littered with more “land mines” that we realize if we want to make land mines out of them.
Yeah, was thinking it be quite a cool move to rename it to something nice with the big 3.0 release …
Welp, Krita does everything I need (and more) so I’ll keep using that.
That would have been a good idea, but alas they think they have good reasons for not doing so. Which, they don’t as their argument isn’t really sound, but people have their strongly held convictions even if they’re incorrect especially when it comes to foss projects, lol.
Glad you have something else good to use!
GIMP 2.99.99.1.5-final-reallyfinal-rc64-proper
Man I love GIMP, it holds such a special place in my heart since I discovered it as a kid in the late aughts. There was this podcast Meet the GIMP I loved and watched on my iPod. All these years and many seizures later and I still remember the host and his voice… Rolf Steinhort I think.
I’m a casual GIMP user. What are the key benefits of v3?
The biggest thing is probably non-destructive editing, so you can do stuff like apply filters without them changing the underlying image. Gtk3 should add better support for tablets and wayland. There’s also better layer tools and font support. A lot of it was on the backend, which should eventually allow for using other color spaces like cmyk natively.
GTK 2 has been EoL since 2020 (GTK 3 released in 2011). GIMP 3 marks the completion of the GTK 3 port, which by itself offers:
- Moving to an actively supported version of GTK (and future migrations will be easier because the difference between 3 and 4 is a lot less than the difference between 2 and 3)
- Better graphics tablet support
- Better handling of HiPPI displays
- Better Wayland support
- Should also mean that they finished refactoring the code, thus making it easier to implement new features.
And on that last point, I would say that the biggest benefit overall with the release of GIMP 3 is that we’ll finally, finally start seeing serious work on implementing non-destructive editing; I’ve read that some of the preliminary work is going to be shipping with the 3.0 release.
