GIMP Version: 2.8
Operating System: Windows
OS Version: XP - SP3
GIMP Experience: Intermediate Level

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I am having all kinds of problems running GIMP 2.8 trying to write python plug-ins on my XP Pro.

I would like to move my operations to a Linux desktop, but I've had nothing but problems with Linux desktops. My latest effort was the latest version of Ubuntu (12.10) which promises a desktop only operation. It was painfully slow and crashed when I tried opening up Chromium.

My experience with Linux desktops are if it crashes once, it will keep crashing on the slightest provocation.

Can somebody recommend a Linux distrubution that is stable and works well with the Linux graphics programs like GIMP and Blender?

I use Linux Fedora-17. I like it and I can't see ever changing to anything else.

My recommendation is Slackware.

I am having a very stable platform with Kubuntu. You can use latest Krita version too. There is also a Blender SVN PPA to install the latest development versions.
If you have a nvidia graphics card you install the proprietary drivers for Blender. If your card supports CUDA, you can install directly from repositories "nvidia-cuda-toolkit" package for GPU render with Cycles.
About write plugins in Python, I have no idea.

I like Linux Mint 13. It's fast, stable and looks cool, and has long term support. You get all the good things from Ubuntu with all of the stupidity stripped away. It comes with GIMP 2.6 so you'll have to remove it and install 2.8, but that's not a big issue, you can add the repository for it (I think). Both GIMP and Krita work flawlessly on it, and also Mypaint and Inkscape. Don't know about Blender though but probably it also works well.

If I may, I would like to recommend Linux Mint and PCLinuxOS.
I particularly appreciate the fact that both of these Distros provide for Live CDs/DVDs equipped with GIMP preinstalled.

Having used Debian SID for close to a decade, I'm toying with Linux Mint 14 KDE at the moment. It's quite luxurious to have everything just working without having to configure stuff yourself (but you still can since it's really debian under the hood). KDE has the best graphical interface for configuring Wacom tablets that I've seen on Linux at least.

Plus David Revoy made an excellent post about setting up Linux Mint 14 KDE for digital open-source painters here: http://www.davidrevoy.com/article155/li ... r-painters
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Griatch

I'll add my vote for Linux Mint 14. I've been running it since the start of the year and Gimp, as well as every other programme installed on it, work without fault - there is a bit of a brush lag on large images but I think that's more to do with my PC rather than with Gimp. The only problem I have got with it is that I use both the Mate and Cinnamon desktops and can't make up my mind which one is the best.

All distros are based on the same code... What makes a distro is the compromise between "leading-edge-ness" and stability. At work I use servers running a late 2009 build of Red Hat Enterprise, and the packages in that build seem to have been frozen in 2005... I'm not sure they would even run Gimp 2.6... Ubuntu and derivatives are a middle ground, the builds are based on recent software, but once you have installed a build, there is little evolution (you mostly get security fixes) and eventually it won't run recent software and you have to upgrade to a more recent version (Ubuntu is changing its policy and introducing "rolling releases...). I have been running Kubuntu 10.04 for the last two years and it very rarely crashed (except during a three-months period with a string of bad kernel fixes). My next machine will be on Kubuntu 12.10 (AMD64) and I may upgrade a bit more often.

It is a curious thing that most distros we have recommended are based on the "evil Ubuntu" or uses it's repositories.

Try Sparky Linux:

http://sparkylinux.org/

Lightweight, based on Debian testing and fits on a USB (4GB) stick. And has Gimp built in.

Sounds good partha... I won't be changing from Fedora but I would like to be able to try this sparkylinux out on a USB.
If I did that, would it have any affect on my Fedora hard drive? I wouldn't want anything to interfere or mess that up.
So, if I run this USB, it would be completely separate from my hard drive?

You can use http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/ to install SparkyLinux to an USB drive Molly. Once installed reboot and use your BIOS setup to run from the USB drive. This will run SparkyLinux. It should not have any effect on your current distro since nothing is installed your hard-drive. It may only use your swap drive which should not cause any issues either.

Thank you Partha,
just wanted to make sure. I would really freak out if I screwed up my Fedora since I had a lot of help getting it installed in the first place.

I will download it later today on my USB. I have an 18GB one.

<crossing fingers> hope that does not happen and shouldn't unless you install it on your hard drive.
If you are really really paranoid. either remove your hard drive or when the system starts, umount /dev/sd1 (or whatever is your first drive).

Bigger the better. Curious, where did you buy an 18GB USB drive??

Thanks all for your replies.

I should have mentioned that I'm running on really old hardware and I don't expect to upgrade any time soon. I'm running a 3.2 Ghz processor with hyperthreading. No quad processor or 64 bit operating systems for me.

I'm running XP Pro, and I would never expect to be running Windows 7 on my system. Should I temper my expectations in a similar way for any of these distributions? Is there any way I can go back to earlier versions of any of these distributions to better accommodate my old slow system?

It does not seem slow. I have an Athlon X2 at 2.5GHz, running Kubuntu (KDE). What is important is the amount of memory RAM. For heavy desktops or distros you need 512MB minimum, 1GB recommended.
And of course a decent graphics card help, especially in modern desktops with effects. Or maybe you should disable the effects to improve performance.

Otherwise, look for lightweight desktops as LXDE or Xfce.

Just for comparison, my PC is about six years old, is 32bit and has a dual core 3GHz processor. There's 4GBs of ram and the graphics card is the newest part of it, bought about a year ago it's a Radeon HD5670 which doesn't mean that much to me but it works just fine.
The only thing that appears to be under powered on my system is the cpu. With some of the large images I run through Gimp the cpu can be running at 100% but the memory usage is rarely above 30-40%.

You should be fine. Besides, if you have an USB port, run sparky and see for yourself.

My computer is an old horse - it has 1.8Ghz dual core (Core2) and 4GB RAM, and Cinnamon runs great on it. So no worries really. That's a good thing about Linux, there's so much less bloat that things just run way faster than on Windows.



The evil parts of Ubuntu are mostly in the interface, Unity (at least for now... Mir is a horrible idea). And the software in the repositories is at least 90% not made by Ubuntu either. I like to look at it like, Mint (and maybe other derivatives, like Kubuntu or Lubuntu) really just take the good parts of Ubuntu and remove all the stupidity.



Well, not exactly. The kernel is largely the same (apart from distro-specific patches), the toolchain and userland tools are largely the same - although even there are some differences now, eg. systemd/sysvinit/upstart - but the most differences come from different package management schemes, whether they use apt or rpm or something else, and the software selection. So it's not exactly a one-dimensional spectrum.