I have been running 2.8.1 from git for some time now.
It allows you to use both V2 and V4 icc profiles thanks to a patch proposed by Onkel Hatti.
This makes it faster than 2.8.0.
http://www.color.org/version4ready.xalter
contains a HTML and PDF file,open the pdf in gimp and if your color management works the top picture should reflect it.
The drawback of installing from git is that your package manager is not aware of it's existence.
So I was very glad to find that Gentoo had taken 2.8.2 in it's repository.
No difference from 2.8.1 that I could find.
I use gutenprint to print from gimp and xsane to scan images.
Now I can install/upgrade them from Gentoo w/o problem.
Gerard.

Thats nice to know that you can get the updated versions of Gimp from your repository Gerard. I think I will look to see if this is so in Fedora.

Molly, GIMP 2.8.2 is currently sitting in the Fedora 17 testing repository, waiting to be pushed to the update repository.

There is nothing to stop you from installing it directly from the the testing repository but I'm sure it will be pushed to updates in a couple of days. New software releases usually sit in the testing repos for a few days, just in case there is a problem with the packaging or a major bug that has yet to be discovered. Once the maintainers are confident there are no major problems with a package, it's pushed to the update repos.

So, we will have it in a few days, maybe this weekend.

Thats fine Tux, I just looked but didn't see anything. BTW, If or when I do decide to download that when it hits the repos, will that make me lose my Gap, and mathmap?

Once GIMP 2.8.2 is pushed to the update repos, it will automatically update your 2.8.0 version when you do an "update". It will maintain all of your plugins, scripts and other addons.

woo hoo. then I can't wait. Thank you Tux. the thought of going through that Gap install makes my skin break out in blotches,