Windows 11 is dying....

[shapirus]

OK, Linux fans and users: in my quest to switch to Linux I need help choosing a photo and bitmap graphics editing app.

Short answer: save yourself the trouble and go back to Windows.

I've done the usual searches but keep coming back to GIMP.

Still not gone back to Windows? All right. So GIMP was created by aliens for aliens. It can be used, of course, and it's a very powerful tool, but it requires perseverance bordering insanity to become a power user. They managed to make simple things difficult and every damn action is designed to work upside down and inside out from what any normal person would expect. On top of that, they keep making the UI worse with each release. Some changes, like the all-grayscale tool icons that you can't tell one from another, can be reverted, though.

Try Krita (available in standard debian repos and I think in every mainstream distro it's the same), you'll probably like it better. It's targeted at painters/artists, IIRC. I tried it, I liked it, it's much more conventional than GIMP, and yet the latter is still my usual go-to editor (and yet I regret launching it every single time). I guess I haven't had a chance to develop enough muscle memory with Krita, because I rarely need to edit bitmaps, so I just keep using the few techniques I learned with GIMP when I need to edit/draw something.

There are more tools, some curious ones like mypaint, some paintbrush-like simple ones (don't know the names, but they are out there).

[asmi]

OK, Linux fans and users: in my quest to switch to Linux I need help choosing a photo and bitmap graphics editing app. I expect this is a question several ex-W11 users would like advice on.

I've done the usual searches but keep coming back to GIMP. I tried it out this afternoon, confident I was smart enough to eat the learning curve for breakfast. WRONG!! WOW, that is one seriously steep curve! I think it would take days of working through tutorials and wrestling with the user interface to get properly up to speed with it.  Also, it doesn't seem to handle high resolution displays properly - it appeared on my screen in miniature, like it doesn't do scaling.

Now, like you all, I've used loads of different graphics editors in Windows; there is a great choice, from simple stuff like Paint up to fully professional tools like the Adobe range. Between those levels are probably dozens of intermediate-level applications which vary in their work flow, their UI, their capabilities.... When it comes to photo and bitmap graphics editing almost everyone will find their needs met by one of the numerous choices.  My choice for now is Paint Shop Pro, because I've been using it since version 3.

So, Linux: is it really all about GIMP? Is there not something intermediate-level with a clean, modern and easy UI that would feel familiar to a Windows refugee?

I'm not really a fan of any OS, but under Windows I've been using mostly Paint.net, for Linux I heard about Pinta which was based on Paint.net. I haven't tried it myself as I use Linux for specific purposes which don't include graphics design, but you can give it a try and see if it's going to be enough. It's nowhere near feature-rich for a professional use, but it's been more than enough for my needs over last several years. And it's free and open-source: https://www.pinta-project.com/

[ebastler]

So GIMP was created by aliens for aliens. It can be used, of course, and it's a very powerful tool, but it requires perseverance bordering insanity to become a power user. They managed to make simple things difficult and every damn action is designed to work upside down and inside out from what any normal person would expect.

I would love to read your take on Blender.

[soldar]

It depends. Some things are very well standardised: file formats, much more so than proprietary platforms, others not so much.

The two things I hate most about Windows are the desktop and they way updates are handled. It would be good if someone were to develop their own desktop environment for Windows, which is fully customisable and doesn't change random things when updated.

I moved to Linux Mint about ten years ago and I am quite satisfied. I do not quite understand the complaints about "so many Linux versions". I have one and that is it. The existence of others does not affect me. I install Mint and I use it.  I have installed more than a dozen in computers of friends and family and so far everybody is happy. They use it and that's it.

My main reasons to leave MS Windows were and still are:

- Spyware. No thanks. Not interested

- Bloatware and HW requirements. Linux can run on older machines which cannot run MS Windows any more. I am not going to buy a new computer just to run MS spyware and bloatware. No thanks. Not interested.

- Update handling. 'nuff said.

In summary, I want to own and control my OS, my machine; I do not want my machine, my data, to be controlled by someone else.

I do miss a few thing from Windows, like the device manager, but for me Linux Mint still wins big. As I say, ten years and counting.

[Siwastaja]

OK, Linux fans and users: in my quest to switch to Linux I need help choosing a photo and bitmap graphics editing app. I expect this is a question several ex-W11 users would like advice on.

GIMP is OK if you do relatively little / easy photo editing occasionally. If you expect nothing, it may be a positive surprise. If you expect Photoshop level capability, you are of course seriously disappointed and not able to do your job.

If you need Windows-only software, then it's obvious: just keep running Windows.

With hybrid needs, it gets more interesting. Like, you do programming/development and are much more productive on an unix-like environment, than on Windows, so you use that. But you also need, say, Photoshop, Solidworks, Altium, whatever. What do you do? Dual boot offers best performance for all those tasks, but pretty costly switching between them. Finding alternative software - e.g. running Cygwin on Windows, or running Gimp on linux - means half of your work is now cumbersome and really you are just working around, instead of working. I'm now relatively happy running a full VM, i.e. Windows 11 on VMWare, so that I can run Altium on it. 95% of my workload is still in the host linux.

But maybe this isn't for you. As you clearly are fine with Windows, and need Windows-only software, it is blatantly obvious to me you should be just keep using Windows. Me, I'm not fine with Windows, but I still need Windows-only software, so I limit my exposure to it by running the VM only when I need Windows software.

[Zero999]

OK, Linux fans and users: in my quest to switch to Linux I need help choosing a photo and bitmap graphics editing app.

Short answer: save yourself the trouble and go back to Windows.

I've done the usual searches but keep coming back to GIMP.

Still not gone back to Windows? All right. So GIMP was created by aliens for aliens. It can be used, of course, and it's a very powerful tool, but it requires perseverance bordering insanity to become a power user. They managed to make simple things difficult and every damn action is designed to work upside down and inside out from what any normal person would expect. On top of that, they keep making the UI worse with each release. Some changes, like the all-grayscale tool icons that you can't tell one from another, can be reverted, though.

Try Krita (available in standard debian repos and I think in every mainstream distro it's the same), you'll probably like it better. It's targeted at painters/artists, IIRC. I tried it, I liked it, it's much more conventional than GIMP, and yet the latter is still my usual go-to editor (and yet I regret launching it every single time). I guess I haven't had a chance to develop enough muscle memory with Krita, because I rarely need to edit bitmaps, so I just keep using the few techniques I learned with GIMP when I need to edit/draw something.

There are more tools, some curious ones like mypaint, some paintbrush-like simple ones (don't know the names, but they are out there).

Yes. I also find GIMP impossible to use, so much so, I mostly use KolourPiaint. GIMP gets used when I need to do something KolourPaint can't, in which case I Google it, follow the often long-winded procedure, then forget about it.

[nctnico]

OK, Linux fans and users: in my quest to switch to Linux I need help choosing a photo and bitmap graphics editing app. I expect this is a question several ex-W11 users would like advice on.

GIMP is OK if you do relatively little / easy photo editing occasionally. If you expect nothing, it may be a positive surprise. If you expect Photoshop level capability, you are of course seriously disappointed and not able to do your job.

Have you ever tried using Photoshop? IIRC Photoshop is notoriously difficult to drive. AFAIK Gimp is started as an alternative for Photoshop so don't expect Gimp to be easy to use all of the sudden. Bottom line: if you want to do hardcore photo editing, expect a steep learning curve either way.

[Siwastaja]

OK, Linux fans and users: in my quest to switch to Linux I need help choosing a photo and bitmap graphics editing app. I expect this is a question several ex-W11 users would like advice on.

GIMP is OK if you do relatively little / easy photo editing occasionally. If you expect nothing, it may be a positive surprise. If you expect Photoshop level capability, you are of course seriously disappointed and not able to do your job.

Have you ever tried using Photoshop? IIRC Photoshop is notoriously difficult to drive. AFAIK Gimp is started as an alternative for Photoshop so don't expect Gimp to be easy to use all of the sudden. Bottom line: if you want to do hardcore photo editing, expect a steep learning curve either way.

Of course, I have used Photoshop for its intended purposes, namely photo editing, and its strong point compared to Gimp is that the controls are normal and intuitive, so normal human being used to normal computer things can use it.

I'm sure 99.999% of people who have used Photoshop and Gimp would agree, but good trolling 

[TizianoHV]

I use many "advanced" programs but I can't use GIMP 

+1 for KolourPaint. I found it randomly but it is what I needed. It has the same workflow of MS paint and supports transparency

By default the toolbar is useless, you should customize it:



__________________________________________________________________________________________________
I moved to Linux mint mate since 1 year. It gives problems from time to time, but I can't stand windows 11 anymore.
Here some usesful programs:

Freecad 3D drawing
KiCad
LibreCad
Blender (not used yet)

Visual Studio Code (not happy about it) with Platform IO

Double Commander file explorer

Qimgv   image viewer
Curtail Image compressor
KolourPaint  Image editor

VLC  video player
Shotcut   video editor
OBS studio screen recorder...l
Cheese webcam
Audacity

Mousepad    ligth text editor

Gnumeric   fast simple xlsx editor
OnlyOffice (just installed, still to test, not satisfied with libreoffice)

Okular pdf reader
PDF Arranger

Xournal++   pen writing, annotation, PDF annotation

DigiKam organize photos....

ScreeRuler,   a.... screen ruler 
Tracker   Measure stuff from images and videos
ConvertAll offline converter
KmPlot   plot functions
stopwatch

Diodon    multi copy paste        (shortcut: super+V)
Flameshot   screen shot
NormCap   extract text from images     (shortcut: super+C)

FSearch    instant file search!    (shortcut: alt+spacebar)


>Measurements
PulseView
TestController
CuteCom   serial port terminal

>Misc
OrganicMaps offline maps
Google Earth

Syncthing ! synchronize files (in my case between linux, android and windows)

>No gui
ffmpeg  video compression
exiftool
git
yt-dlp   download youtube videos... (yt-dlp  -N 6 -f ba+bv -S "+codec:avc:m4a,res:720" --parse-metadata "description:(?s)(?P<meta_comment>.+)" --embed-metadata --embed-thumbnail --embed-chapters "LINK")


*Many of these programs need some customization (lots of settings)

[SteveThackery]

OnlyOffice (just installed, still to test, not satisfied with libreoffice)

LibreOffice has excellent functionality, but I simply cannot enjoy using it so it's a no-no for me. OpenOffice offers only a subset of MS Office's functionality, so I recommend you give it a good going over before committing to it.

My favourite is SoftMaker Office - it has virtually all the functionality of MS Office but none of the cloud-oriented, touch-oriented bullshit Microsoft imposes on us. So - speaking only for myself - I prefer SoftMaker Office NX over OpenOffice, and even over MS Office. 

The downside is you have to pay for it. But that's fine by me - I don't expect great quality software for nothing. You can have a subscription, or pay a one-off fee.  EDIT: Oh, I forgot to say - they do a freeware version as well with reduced functionality.

ANOTHER EDIT: Don't be put off SoftMaker Office by the mention of 'AI'. They've done it properly: people who like it can use it; people who don't want it can eliminate all mention of it. That's what I've done.

[Zero999]

OnlyOffice (just installed, still to test, not satisfied with libreoffice)

LibreOffice has excellent functionality, but I simply cannot enjoy using it so it's a no-no for me. OpenOffice offers only a subset of MS Office's functionality, so I recommend you give it a good going over before committing to it.

My favourite is SoftMaker Office - it has virtually all the functionality of MS Office but none of the cloud-oriented, touch-oriented bullshit Microsoft imposes on us. So - speaking only for myself - I prefer SoftMaker Office NX over OpenOffice, and even over MS Office. 

The downside is you have to pay for it. But that's fine by me - I don't expect great quality software for nothing. You can have a subscription, or pay a one-off fee.  EDIT: Oh, I forgot to say - they do a freeware version as well with reduced functionality.

Have you used LibraOffice recently? The UI can now be made more MS Office like. What functionality was missing? Office software has had excess functionally for a long time. Most users, even those who've being using it for a long time, are only aware of a small percentage of the features.

[ebastler]

My favourite is SoftMaker Office - it has virtually all the functionality of MS Office but none of the cloud-oriented, touch-oriented bullshit Microsoft imposes on us. So - speaking only for myself - I prefer SoftMaker Office NX over OpenOffice, and even over MS Office. 

I agree that SoftMaker Office comes closest to Microsoft Office, in terms of functionality and UI. Including a pretty decent "ribbon" UI, which is what I have come to prefer with MS Office. The similarity was important for me since I still use the MS suite at work.

Still, it was not close enough for me, and was one of the reasons why I ended my recent "let's move to Linux Mint" experiment and grudgingly installed Windows again. Many details are still rougher than in the Microsoft programs -- e.g. SoftMaker still relies on modal properties dialogs for all kinds of things (where your changes only take effect when you close the dialog), whereas MS has non-modal sidebars. And don't get me started on SoftMakers's printer dialog!

The other "killer app" for me was Fusion 360. I had assumed I would be able to use the browser version, but you need a commercial license for that. And yes, I know about FreeCad but don't like using it.

[soldar]

Yes. I also find GIMP impossible to use, so much so, I mostly use KolourPiaint. GIMP gets used when I need to do something KolourPaint can't, in which case I Google it, follow the often long-winded procedure, then forget about it.

I use Linux Mint and I am still mainly using MS Paint and Irfanview with WINE and they do more than 99% of what I need. Than I also have Inkscape, mainly for vector graphics, Pinta, Drawing, Pix, Blender, Gimp, etc that I have downloaded at one time or another for something specific and never really used much.

I have now installed KolourPaint and will have a look. Thanks. Maybe in my next install of Mint I will not bother with Pait-Wine.

[PlainName]

I moved to Linux mint mate since 1 year. It gives problems from time to time, but I can't stand windows 11 anymore.
Here some usesful programs:

[...]

All of them free?

It's nice to have free stuff but I wonder what would happen if everyone used only free apps. Perhaps it's the same as many other things where a relatively small number are different so don't have a big effect. Ad blockers, for instance, were great when not many people used them, but once the numbers got big enough to register things changed quite a bit. If everyone used effective ones now, I bet the interweb would be quite different.

I have no problem paying for something that is useful to me, but that isn't saying I would pay a subscription or not throw a wobbly at online activation. I use free stuff and adblockers too, of course

[PlainName]

Yes. I also find GIMP impossible to use, so much so, I mostly use KolourPiaint. GIMP gets used when I need to do something KolourPaint can't, in which case I Google it, follow the often long-winded procedure, then forget about it.

Hmmm. I am going to have to give gimp a try, now 

[TizianoHV]

Have you used LibraOffice recently? ... What functionality was missing? Office software has had excess functionally for a long time.

Yes, I'm on version 24. I'm sure that it has all the functions, but they don't work well.
I'm searching something with only the basic but reliable and fast.

gnumeric is an example: is not complete, but the basics are there, it's fast (instant launch, no delays) and reliable.
abiword, gnumeric's cousin, was basic, fast but totally unreliable (I really wanted to use it but I uninstalled it because of all the work I had lost due to errors...).

LibreOffice is not fast and worst is not consistent. Basic stuff, like resizing images, tables styles sometimes they work, sometimes no (for example, when you resize an image, sometimes it leaves a invisible object and you have to go back and resize it again)(or when you select text there's a delay before the formattation fields gets updated).

MS offfice is not that far: bloated, slow often inconsistent. For this reason I'm thinking of learning LaTeX

All of them free? It's nice to have free stuff but I wonder what would happen if everyone used only free apps...

Yes, most of them can be installed directly from the software manager, most of them accept donations. I'm 100% with you. At the moment I'm a student and I'm limited in $$. But for example I don't use an adblocker on youtube because I don't find it right (for creators and the expense of hosting the huge amount of data for "free"). I'm writing down all these program on a list to remeber them and do donations in the future.

Still, many of these apps are done with passion, not money. See microsoft, basically infinite budget, but all their new apps are almost unpresentable (put some rounded corners, AI and call it a day. Who cares about performance or bugs...).

To have effect.. having the money to add your programs by default on everyone PC helps...

[shapirus]

It gets funny sometimes. My thoughts as I've been reading your post:

LibreOffice is not fast and worst is not consistent. Basic stuff, like resizing images, tables styles sometimes they work, sometimes no (for example, when you resize an image, sometimes it leaves a invisible object and you have to go back and resize it again)(or when you select text there's a delay before the formattation fields gets updated).

WYSIWYG sucks. Works well for super simple one or two-page documents only. LaTeX is the ultimate solution.

...and then

MS offfice is not that far: bloated, slow often inconsistent. For this reason I'm thinking of learning LaTeX

As though you read my thoughts.

The underlying TeX engine is near perfect (see who created it). LaTeX is an excellent user-facing wrapper for it. However, it really requires getting and reading a good book on it before even starting. And don't even think of using WYSIWYG frontends for it, because see above.

[nctnico]

One of the pitfalls is trying to use a word processor to do (complicated) layouts. A word processor is for creating documents, not desktop publishing.

[SteveThackery]

Have you used LibraOffice recently? The UI can now be made more MS Office like. What functionality was missing? Office software has had excess functionally for a long time. Most users, even those who've being using it for a long time, are only aware of a small percentage of the features.

Yep, I was using LibreOffice in Linux Mint just a couple of days ago. I think its functionality is basically complete (it's the closest to MS Office in that respect that I've tried) but I find the UI to be a scrappy mess - even the latest version.

I've just signed up to a SoftMaker Office NX Home subscription. I'm generally anti subscription software, but it's so cheap at GBP24 per year. That's 50 pence a week - a bargain. Furthermore, that price allows you to install it on five separate machines. They do a version for Windows, Linux, Android, and a couple of Apple OSs as well. So for 50p a week I can run it on my Windows workstation, my Android tablet, my Windows laptop, my Linux system and still have a spare licence.

The UI is basically as good as MS Office (actually better because I like the more colourful elements) but without the non-standard Open... and Save... dialogs and without the OneDrive integration. I love it.  To be specific, I love it way more than any other office suite, including Microsoft Office.

I can't dump MS Office altogether, though, because I'm a serious fan of OneNote, and nobody has come close to cloning it. Finally, there's another MS product I cannot live without: Visio. It is a fantastic diagramming and technical drawing tool*, and again, nobody makes anything like it.

*Microsoft acquired Visio from Shapeware, and messed it up by converting it into a data visualisation tool, hiding away all the powerful drawing tools. Luckily you can customise it back to being a great diagramming tool and switch off the ribbons you don't need.

[SteveThackery]

One of the pitfalls is trying to use a word processor to do (complicated) layouts. A word processor is for creating documents, not desktop publishing.

I agree, but MS Word gets pretty close if you use frames and text boxes.

[SteveThackery]

WYSIWYG sucks. Works well for super simple one or two-page documents only. LaTeX is the ultimate solution.

I don't agree with you about WYSIWYG, and I doubt very many people would. Not that I'm knocking your preference, just disagreeing with it. I've done a 1000-page training document full of diagrams and photos as well as lots of text using MS Word and it worked great. To be fair, the manual was divided into twelve lessons, which made it a bit more wieldy.

[SteveThackery]

I use Linux Mint and I am still mainly using MS Paint and Irfanview with WINE and they do more than 99% of what I need. Than I also have Inkscape, mainly for vector graphics, Pinta, Drawing, Pix, Blender, Gimp, etc that I have downloaded at one time or another for something specific and never really used much.

Today I installed the Windows versions of Pinta and Paint.Net. I started them up side-by-side for a detailed comparison. I hate to say it, but it was another big disappointment: Paint.Net wipes the floor with Pinta. Whoever said Pinta was basically a clone of Paint.Net.... well, I respectfully disagree. The Pinta UI is definitely weird, with icons in non-standard locations, and a row of teeny little icons - in black-and-white - up on the top right that do various important things. Once again it's a typical Linux app: reasonably good functionality, but a geeky UI.

Soldar: will Paint.Net run under WINE? If so you might want to try it - I was quite impressed and I'm going to use it for the smaller jobs. I use Paint Shop Pro for the big stuff, just because I'm very familiar with it. I wouldn't recommend it, though - "bloatware" is a massive understatement.

[Electrodynamic]

I have been using Apache OpenOffice for years and it's MS word compatible. It's basically a clone of MS Office with most of the same features. I'm running it on windows right now but have also loaded it on a Linux system/Raspberry Pi.

https://www.openoffice.org/

[TizianoHV]

I can't dump MS Office altogether, though, because I'm a serious fan of OneNote, and nobody has come close to cloning it.

Are you using it for handwriting?
Xournal++!
I started with onenote (on windows 11) , but I got annoyed by the continuous updates breaking and changing stuff and the gigantic files.
I installed xournal++ before getting into linux. I started using it and I never turned back. Perfect to annotate pdf, take notes...

The default toolbar is not great but you can modify it (see mine) and you should disable autosave (it has given issues to me, I prefer to save manually).

Today I installed the Windows versions of Pinta and Paint.Net. I started them up side-by-side for a detailed comparison. I hate to say it, but it was another big disappointment

Everyone talks about Pinta and an other one, but I didn't liked them. You have to move a lot the mouse, click a lot of stuff, confirmations... 
KolourPaint satisfied me, for me It's better than paint. It should be available also for windows

[nctnico]

KolourPaint looks like an interesting tool indeed! I'll give it a go