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.

babl 0.1.0 // gegl 0.1.0



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.

gimp gitinstall