Peachy. Sounds like there’s nothing to worry about then (from a user POV).

It’s bad because it’s full-featured?

I find it great and in fact I prefer some things to photoshop, like the default keyboard shortcuts, saves as a project file, better filters, amazing plugins, full control over preferences and scriptability. I also prefer the foreground select tool and unified transform tool. There are a few things that PS does better though, like its warp tool and custom print settings, plus obviously nondestructive editing (coming in next GIMP release). People shit on GIMP way more than it deserves. I put it down to a) sunk costs in learning Photoshop b) slow development in the past and c) groupthink/fashionable.

If you’re doing serious printing you need to convert to the printer profile before printing anyway.

I find the UI completely fine. But I think a lot of people expect it to be a perfect and direct clone of photoshop that you don’t have to pay for, rather than its own piece of software and are consequently upset when they have to learn how to use it. People forget that they had to learn how to use photoshop as well.

Like you, I’ve asked people to give a specific example of something that is clearly bad about GIMP and either don’t get a proper answer, or they name something from an ancient version.

I’ve installed it from F-droid but still. Fuck google. They really do need breaking up.

I heavily rely on Syncthing. Does anyone know what the outlook is for Syncthing-fork, or what the likelihood is of someone taking on maintenance of this version?

I did it on a humble user account using GNOME disks. Select the USB stick and choose restore image in the menu at the top right.

It’s because their whole tone has been completely and utterly miserable. Regardless of how objectively bad the state of everything is, it would have cost them nothing to soothe our morale with a bit of positivity after over a decade of endless bad news.

I second Calibre. You can configure it to roll all the articles into a single epub too, so they don’t clutter your ereader. I tested it out recently and it works really well. I haven’t had the discipline to do it yet but I love the idea of connecting to the internet once a week to download content and messages and then going back offline.

What sort of printers do you make your prints with? And do you print directly from GIMP or from something else? I’ve been trying to set up a FOSS printing workflow using Canon giclee printers, which has been mostly successful but I haven’t yet figured out how to print custom sizes on roll paper, only standard sizes on sheet paper.

I don’t think this winter fuel allowance cut is actually that bad but I think Labour are mega stupid to have announced it when they did and to have allowed it to dominate the news.

3.0 is gonna be so good 🦾

Awesome, was that his GIMP masterclass? I’m thinking of doing that one.

I don’t think many people realise what a disaster this is and what it shows us about how pervasive toxic substances are in our lives.

Nearly everything that is in this sludge is either something that has passed through the human body, or come into contact with it. After being reincorporated into the food chain through use as fertiliser it goes through this process once again, joining the intake of ‘virgin’ chemicals added during manufacturing, packaging and transport. It’s cumulative; much like dumping the old contents of your hoover back onto the floor each time you need to hoover it again. It’s debatable whether this constant recycling is better or worse than getting bioaccumulated in the body, like microplastics do in the brain for example, but either way it’s bad.

PFAS are just one group of harmful chemicals that we are currently aware of and are used in food packaging, toilet paper, cosmetics and clothing among other things. They are non-combustible, so forget about dealing with the problem by incinerating stuff. Dumping them into the sea isn’t going to get rid of them either as they are mobile in the water cycle, which is why you now find them in rain and groundwater.

Farmers need to put the fertility and water back into the land which was exported when their crop left the field. But so many pollutants and untested chemicals have been introduced into the system that it’s now impossible to do responsibly, even if you want to. Seriously, it’s a losing battle at the moment.

It’s not the first time that we’ve discovered that we’ve been unknowingly poisoning ourselves and it won’t be the last.

We need much more restriction on what chemicals and materials can be produced in the first place. It’s no good waiting for generations until someone finds a causality in the data, there is public outrage, a campaign, a national law passed and then an international agreement. And there’s no way to clean this stuff up once it’s out there.

If we’re going to use synthetic substances, they need to be proven safe before they are used on a global mass scale. Thats how it’s done in medicine. Yes, it will slow us down. But how much is it slowing us down diagnosing and treating the nearly 1 in 2 people in the UK who end up with cancer?

What was the justification for banning them in the first place? Seems a bit hardcore…

Great idea!

I’d like to see the Greens really build up some steam over the course of this parliament. If Labour are going to commit us to ‘Austerity 2.0’ then I think we’re going to need some serious progressives to counteract the appeal of right wing fringe parties like Reform.

When I’ve thought about this is in the past I’ve concluded that my expectations of Linux are actually higher than Windows or Mac. It’s given me the expectation that if something doesn’t work the way I want it then it will be possible to make it do that, whereas with other operating systems I have been more inclined to just accept a limitation and move on.

OK, I’m guessing that term has some extra baggage around here which I’m not privy to… I spent too many years chopping wood and growing corn, so someone will have to fill me in!

I thought I’d just slip it in and see what happened! I like making things in GIMP as well