Krita 1.6 — State of the Art

brendan0powers writes to tell us Linux.com is reporting that while Krita 1.6 may have been released with the rest of the KOffice suite this week it is anything but a run-of-the-mill piece of productivity software. Krita is a 'fully-loaded raster graphics workhorse' definitely capable of standing up to most anything else available. Linux.com and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.

Why is being KDE important?

[acidrain]

Does it acheive a goal that couldn't have been achived within the GIMP codebase with less effort? E.g. different UI modes?

Surely a name starting with a K instead of a G wan't enough?

I don't see how this kind of replication of effort best serves the adoption of Linux on the desktop in the long run.

Re:Why is being KDE important?

[carlmenezes]

Well, I agree with you and I don't.

Look at the distros for example. Lots of em out there and then Ubuntu comes along - when it did, we were like, "who needs ANOTHER one" - and does something right. People notice that and move to it. Other distros try to adopt some of the plus points. That's not wasted effort. I guess evolution of a species is the closest I analogy I can get to. The best survive.

So if Krita comes along and even though it duplicates 90% of the functionality, if Krita gets it right, then all that 90% of the effort is worth it.

It's diminishing returns, yes, but in the end, its the extra mile that distinguishes the leaders from the also rans. It may not be any extra functionality at all - just the way its been put together that makes it a winning combination. Then the power of open source takes over and everyone benefits.

I think thats great and thats kinda what evolution is - varying the combination of a lot of existing stuff ever so slightly to see which one produces the best. So its a double edged sword - a freakin amazing one at that :)

Re:Why is being KDE important?

[chill]

Yes, it did. For the longest time The Gimp was bound by "that'll be in 2.0, using Gegl". Gegl languihed for YEARS, before recently resurfacing but still not done - not even close. This is one reason the project was forked into Film Gimp, now CinePaint [cinepaint.org].

Personally, The Gimp's interface gave me fits and I found it very hard to work in. Since I on't use it every day, it isn't something I was willing to put a huge effort into learning. Krita is much more "natural" to me and had a much shallower learning curve.

KDE integration is more than just a theme and a K-name. That would have been almost impossible with The Gimp.

Finally, there is the name "Gimp". It means "lame" or "handicapped", which was a totally stupid thing to call a program. Yes, I know it is an acronym, but ut was a stupid idea none-the-less.

Re:How the heck do I load a jpg?

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting.... you use Linux at work and are forced to use a certain distro. Somehow I don't buy that. Linux is about choice and freedom. I find it highly unusual it would be deployed in a corporate environment unless the users were mostly self sufficient.

That's so naive I almost laughed. Have you ever worked in a corporate environment? Setting up computers is for the IT department. Everyone else is there to do something else. And the IT department's job is a hell of a lot easier (and cheaper) when all of the workstations are running the same thing. Everyone taking care of their own machine is fine for 3 or 4 people, or for special circumstances, but it just wouldn't work for huge deployments.

At work, the IT department has the freedom and choice. Everyone else just uses what IT tells them to.