A new beta release of Glimpse, the rebranded fork of GIMP, is available for testing on Linux.
Glimpse 0.2.0 is based on GIMP 2.10.18. Like previous releases Glimpse iterates on the popular image editor to broaden its appeal, soften its image, and “back port useful functionality”.
“A new name and logo, a cleaner UI, and fewer “easter eggs” make an already amazing open source software package feel more enterprise-ready,” states the official website.
While there isn’t a user-facing overview of what changes are specifically new to Glimpse 0.2.0 at the time of writing most of GIMP’s recent feature additions (like new 3D transform tool, faster .abr loading, etc) are present and working here.
The Glimpse team say they plan to shift ‘a lot’ of their development resources towards the creation of a next-gen image editor called Glimpse NX. The new app will be “written from the ground up”, be permissively licensed, and made available across operating systems.
Discussions on integrating some of PhotoGIMP‘s UX tweaks and brush packs into the regular GIMP-based Glimpse are also taking place.
Keen to kick the tyres? You can install Glimpse 0.2.0 beta on Ubuntu (and other Linux distros) from the Snap Store:
Or from Flathub, the de-facto Flatpak software repository:
Talking of Flatpak, download stats shared by the Glimpse team show that the Flathub version is proving especially popular with users. Since last year’s debut release this specific build has clocked up more than 18,000 downloads — and growing!
A Glimpse 0.2.0 AppImage release containing both the editor and a raft of third party plugins is being planned, and will likely appear sometime after the 0.2.0 stable release.