Some weeks ago we talked here on the blog about Glimpse, which is a fork of GIMP which was created by unhappy GIMP users with their name, because the creators of the fork believe that the use of the name GIMP is unacceptable and prevents the publisher from spreading in educational institutions, public libraries and the corporate environment.
The word "gimp" in some social groups of native English speakers is perceived as an insult and it also has a negative connotation associated with the BDSM subculture. An example of a problem is a case where an employee was forced to rename the GIMP shortcut on the desktop so that his colleagues would not think he was involved in BDSM. Teachers trying to use GIMP in the educational process also note problems with inappropriate student reaction to the name GIMP.
Faced with this, the dissatisfied asked GIMP developers to choose to rename from the editor, to which they refused to change the name and believe that during the 20 years of the project's existence, his name has become widely known and he is associated with a graphic editor in a computer environment.
And that in situations where the use of the name GIMP seems unacceptable, it is recommended to use the full name "GNU Image Manipulation Program" or to create sets with a different name.
Responding from the GIMP project after 13 years of trying to convince developers so that they change their name 7 developers, 2 documentation authors, and a designer participated in the development of Glimpse.
Over five months, about $ 500 of donations were received for the development of the fork, of which $ 50 of this, the Glimpse developers transferred to the GIMP project.
About Glimpse version 1.0
After all this, unhappy users who decided to fork GIMP, recently announced that it has already reached its first stable version This being the version of Glimpse 1.0 and which has already been published and is available to the general public.
In its current form, Glimpse evolves as a "downstream fork", following the main GIMP code base.
Glimpse forked from GIMP 2.10.12 and is distinguished by a name change, directory renaming, and user interface cleanup.
As external dependencies, the BABL 0.1.68, GEGL 0.4.16 and MyPaint 1.3.0 packages are involved (MyPaint brush support is built in).
In this stable version it stands out in the ad that it alson the icons theme was updated, removed the code with easter eggs, build system redesigned, some scripts were added to compile the snap packages, tests were implemented in the Travis continuous integration system, a 32-bit Windows installer was created, added compilation support in the Vagrant environment, and integration with GNOME Builder improved.
Of the other changes that stand out:
- Documentation that is not required for this fork has been removed
- Installation and configuration files location changed to avoid conflicts
- Cached and temporary files location changed to avoid conflicts
- Process identifiers have been modified so that they do not conflict with other running instances
- Removed 'gray' UI theme (duplicate 'System')
- Maintained compatibility with existing GNU IMP v2.x plugins
- Windows save file metadata icon replaced
Download and install Glimpse on Linux
For those interested in being able to install this fork of GIMP, they can do it with the help of Snap or Flatpak packages. They should only have the support to install these types of packages on their system.
In the case of Snap, just type in the terminal:
sudo snap install glimpse-editor
While for Flatpak:
flatpak install flathub org.glimpse_editor.Glimpse
Anecdotal, a project with zero news, time will tell.
Thanks for sharing.
Who would have thought that the name GIMP would mean an insult in other cultures. From that perspective it is quite logical to want to change the name, of course that on the developers' side it is quite difficult for a program with years of permanence to change its identifying name. Greetings, very good article.
And wouldn't it have been easier to create a portable gimp, use a custom installer that when creating the shortcut on the desktop would put any other name and even another icon?
The never ending problem in free software. Many programs derived from other more popular ones. Many programs that do the same. Only colors, icons and more change ... To present us with another «option». More of the same, segmentation does not allow progress. (Gnu-Linux) in its desktop versions is the great mirror that many do not want to see. There it is denoted that the segmentation that its derivatives have made does not allow the OS to spread as desired. Now Gimp will go through the same thing that hundreds of free software applications have gone through.