Every wondered what famed FOSS image editor GIMP was like in 1996? Well, now you can find out.
Developer balooii has packaged GIMP 0.54 into a Flatpak that runs on modern 64-bit Linux desktops with Wayland. It’s apparently the earliest version of the app with the source code still available to build.
This is not not an official GIMP effort, but a community effort. It’s also something of a work-in-progress – of an ancient work-in-progress – with the maintainer promising they’ll share more era-specific plugins and tutorials on using this ancient build in time.
Before you skip to the install bit, there is a slew of trivia-laden history to take in first. It may help explain why this version is more notable to package than later, more featured builds.
Genesis of an IMportant Project
GIMP 0.54 was an early preview release from 1996 (1.0 didn’t arrive until 1998). The app’s interface at this point was using Motif, a closed-source GUI toolkit that, to quote the GIMP history page, made “efficient distribution to a lot of users impossible”.
The friction lead to one of GIMP’s founders, UC Berkeley undergraduate Peter Mattis, to replace Motif with his own custom toolkit: GTK, aka the GIMP Toolkit (careful Googling that phrase in 2026, mind).
GTK was never intended to become a general purpose toolkit (aka big or professional, rather a bit like another well-known scratch-your-own itch effort). Yet, in 1997, GTK became the foundation of the GNOME desktop.
This version also has the distinction of being the one designer Larry Ewing used to draw the original Linux Tux mascot (entirely with a mouse). Yup, the OG peng Tux penguin, complete with antialiased edges.
How to try GIMP 0.54 on Ubuntu
Is a 30-year old version of GIMP worth using in 2026? As a nostalgia trip or retro-artistry, sure. But you won’t be doing any hardcore or innovative work. on this.
In 1996, GIMP 0.54 was beta release. There are bugs, there is no layers support and what effects are there are tucked behind a right-click on the canvas. It doesn’t look like the GIMP most of us have known for decades, and it doesn’t behave like it either.
Surprisingly, it did offer a plug-in system back then – but the closed and inflexible nature of the Motif UI put off a lot of potential early contributors.
It wasn’t until 1998 and the first GIMP 1.0 release that there was something approaching a tool roster that could claim to rival raster image editors of the era.
On the accompanying website the packager says they made this “for the two people out there” who might be interested in trying it.
If I’m one of them… Are you the other?
GIMP 0.54 Flatpak
You can download gimp-0.54.1-10.flatpak from the GitLab page (linked further down). To install it on Ubuntu you’ll need to install flatpak first, then use your terminal to install the Flatpak itself:
flatpak install --user gimp-0.54.1-10.flatpak
The website says that if the text tool isn’t working to try and install legacy X11 font packages. On Ubuntu those are split across various sub-packages, but sudo apt install xfonts-base should help.
You can get the Flatpak from Gitlab.