Install The Single-Windowed Gimp Preview in Ubuntu [How-to]

By , Published October 6, 2009

Want to try out the new “single window” Gimp? Here’s how!

BEAR IN MIND THAT THIS IS IN DEVLOPEMENT SOFTWARE AND NOT DESIGNED FOR EVERYDAY USE.
You will also need to remove any exising Gimp install before installing this.


PPA:
A kind soul is maintaing a PPA with recent git builds of GIMP. Although he says it won’t be updated every night – it will save you have to compile it yourself!

  • https://launchpad.net/~matthaeus123/+archive/mrw-gimp-svn

Alternatively you can get the latest-latest builds by compiling it from the GIMP git. (Gimp git sounds like an insult…)

Got Git?
First step is to ensure you have git installed, as we will be building Gimp 2.8 from source via a GIT repository.

  • sudo apt-get install git-core

Get Source-y
Open a terminal and issue: -

  • git clone git://git.gnome.org/gimp

This will download all of the source needed to build from. (This may take a little while so go make that nettle tea or feed the shrimps or something!)

Other dependencies
Gimp 2.8 also requires gegl 0.1.0 and babl 0.1.0. You can download these via the links below and install them using the usual ./configure && make && sudo make install method.



B u i l d
We now want to build this source so navigate into the newly created ‘gimp’ folder in your Home directory by using:

  • cd gimp

Then rattle off the following

  • ./configure
  • make
  • sudo make install

If all goes to plan you should now find Gimp installed in the Graphics section of the main Gnome Menu.

Enable Single Window Mode
The spiffy single window mode isn’t enabled by default, so to see what all the fuss is about turn it on via the ‘Windows’ menu in Gimp.

You’ll find that this updated version of Gimp also comes with a few new features, too! Including tabs to navigate between open projects: -

And the ability to edit text directly on an image (no more pop-up toolbox!): -

Despite this only being an initial early build of what will become The Gimp 2.8 it’s an exciting glimpse into the evolution of the premier image editor on Linux.

Article originally appeared on omgubuntu.co.uk

Related posts:

  1. First Pictures Of Single Window Gimp – It Looks AMAZING.
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  • Mohan

    Cool, tip. I shall try it out when I get home, thanks.

  • http://www.photricity.com/ Josh Meyer

    Just noticed that your ubuntu link at the bottom of your site is broken. Currently ubuntu.org goes nowhere and http://www.ubuntu.org redirects to some civil society site. I believe the correct url is ubuntu.com

  • Anonymous

    Ha ha! This will start to lure me away from Photoshop on Crossover! (CX does a great job but it’s not as good as a native solution)

    Are they still developing GIMPShop?

    • Mohan

      I liked what GIMPShop tried to do, but it was clunky in my opinion.

  • Mark

    Everything seemed to go well for me up until the “Build” part.

    “./configure” yields the following:

    ./configure: line 1982: syntax error near unexpected token `no-define’
    ./configure: line 1982: `AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE(no-define dist-bzip2)’

    “make” gives this:

    make: *** No targets specified and no makefile found. Stop.

    “sudo make install” yields:

    make: *** No rule to make target `install’. Stop.

    Any idea what I did wrong?

    • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

      Try it again but use ./autogen.sh inplace of configure and see if that makes a difference.

      Did u get any other errors regarding missing dependencies ?

      • Mark

        OK, I installed the missing dependencies that autogen revealed (gtk-doc and intltool), then re-ran autogen. Now it’s hanging up on gegl, saying it’s not found. I did run ./configure && make && sudo make install on the gegl tarball linked in your article, but for some reason, autogen.sh isn’t seeing it. So I created a link to the file “gegl” in /usr/bin, in case it was looking for it there… autogen.sh still can’t find it. Gegl itself is living in a folder in my home directory.

        Any idea where autogen.sh wants to see gegl?

  • Nick

    Please get rid of the header text with the yellow/red backgrounds, they look absolutely horrid. Other then that, great article!!

    • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

      *sigh*

      it’ll be done :P

  • Anonymous

    at last !
    thanks

  • http://seifsallam.co.cc/ Seif Sallam

    i’ve always wanted that.

    >>>PLEASE REMOVE THE YELLOW HIGHLIGHT & THE RED ONES TOO<<<

  • http://www.arresojas.it gusions

    can you create a .deb file?
    This how to is compatible in Ubuntu Jaunty?

    Saluti

  • Anonymous

    You could do this instead:
    sudo apt-get install git-core
    git clone git://git.gnome.org/gimp
    cd gimp
    sudo apt-get build-dep gimp
    ./configure
    make
    sudo checkinstall

    the “sudo apt-get build-dep gimp” will download and install all the build dependencies for gimp.
    “sudo checkinstall” will build a .deb to install (so that it can be uninstalled through add/remove programs)

    • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

      One of the few times i don’t include checkinstall or build-dep in a how-to someone actually notices!

      Usually when i post a tutorial using them people get confused…

    • jordanwb

      “sudo apt-get build-dep gimp” gives

      “E: You must put some ‘source’ URIs in your sources.lsit”

      Um what repo do I add?

    • http://www.simonevery.com/ Simon

      I’m really new to Ubuntu and trip over pretty much every single hurdle, especially when dealing with the Terminal…

      It all goes fine until I get to ./configure – I get:

      ‘bash: ./configure: No such file or directory’

      Clearly doing this all wrong – any help would be really handy!

      Thanks.

      • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

        Have you made sure you moved into the correct folder (the one with the stuff you just downloaded) ?

        cd gimp

        and then try

        ./configure

        An alternatively (and really easy) way to install this is just to add the following PPA to

        system > Admin > software sources > ‘third party software’ (now called ‘other software’ in karmic)

        Click add and paste one of the following

        If you use karmic
        deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/matthaeus123/mrw-gimp-svn/ubuntu karmic main

        if you use jaunty
        deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/matthaeus123/mrw-gimp-svn/ubuntu jaunty main

        Now close and open a terminal. PAste: -
        sudo apt-key adv –recv-keys –keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 405A15CB

        Then run an update using
        sudo apt-get update

        and then if you already have gimp installed this will ‘upgrade’ it. If you don’t then you need to install gimp via the method of your choice

        terminal
        sudo apt-get insatll gimp

        • http://www.simonevery.com/ Simon

          Thanks for your help!

          I must have messed this up somewhere along the line because the ‘single window mode’ option isn’t there…

          back to the drawing board i guess…

          thanks again

        • http://www.simonevery.com/ Simon

          Thanks for your help!

          I must have messed this up somewhere along the line because the ‘single window mode’ option isn’t there…

          back to the drawing board i guess…

          thanks again

  • Bob Hazard
    • Anonymous

      Bob, thanks for posting that! I’ve installed from PPA before, and have added the GPG key and APT line to sources.list.

      The problem is, what command do I use to install the PPA version of GIMP as opposed to the official version in Ubuntu’s main repo? If I do “sudo apt-get install gimp” it wants to install the official GIMP rather than the PPA version.

      Thanks for any light you can shed!

      -Mark

      • Bob Hazard

        I had a similar problem from the command line, if you open up synaptic you can see in the lower-left you can sort by status, origin etc.

        If you choose origin then pick ppa.launchpad.net/main you will find the version that you want

        • Anonymous

          Bob,

          Thanks for the tip! As it turned out, I was actually installing the correct one all along. I guess it whizzed by so fast in the terminal that I mis-read the source.

          Loving single-window GIMP!!! I had no idea how profound an effect this would have on GIMP’s usability for me.

  • http://www.nivelcien.net Naruedyoh

    Downloading it now!

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Jeff-Reid/527506052 Jeff Reid

    MAJOR PROBLEM!

    The PPA didn’t work for me, so I tried to install the hard way and ran into what I absolutely HATE about Linux — DEPENDENCY HELL.

    The gegl configure program claimed that Glib was not installed, so I downloaded and installed the latest version of it. Now, I get this error message when I run gegl configure:

    checking for GLIB – version >= 2.16.1…
    *** ‘pkg-config –modversion glib-2.0′ returned 2.23.1, but GLIB (2.22.3)
    *** was found! If pkg-config was correct, then it is best
    *** to remove the old version of GLib. You may also be able to fix the error
    *** by modifying your LD_LIBRARY_PATH enviroment variable, or by editing
    *** /etc/ld.so.conf. Make sure you have run ldconfig if that is
    *** required on your system.
    *** If pkg-config was wrong, set the environment variable PKG_CONFIG_PATH
    *** to point to the correct configuration files

    I tried to uninstall the version of Glib that actually was installed that the gegl configure program managed to miss the first time around, but that would require me to uninstall just about everything installed on my system, apparently.

    I am very frustrated and angry right now, but that aside, I would really appreciate help to fix this mess.

    Thanks.

 
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