Gimp Users dot com sent me an email with some further interesting news about future developments with 2.8.
Check it out here. =)

http://www.gimpusers.com/tutorials/gimp ... april-2010


EDIT:
Gimp Nightly builds: see http://www.chromecode.com/2009/10/night ... uilds.html
Last 2.7.2

Sweeeeeeeeet!! I cannot wait! The enhance text support really looks awesome as does the the brush rotation and brush dynamics. The full implementation of GEGL has me stoked as does 16 bit RAW import! JPEG 2000 and Zoom Hotkeys are also exciting! The single window option has been long awaited. I'm not sure how I feel about using a separate export for non XCF files, but I don't see that it would be any problem. All in all, it looks like a great start to the new year!!

I actually went to gimpuser yesterday; doen't look like 2.8 will be release til Q1 next year (was hoping for a Christmas preset). Still plan on keeping GIMP 2.6.10 (like I've kept 1.2.4; lol). I've inferred from David that the new changes are not going to be G'MIC friendly; hope that will be false when 2.8 is released, but I (except for the occasion freeze issue {and loss of GIMP edit} since I upgraded to Win7 64-bit {man that bugs me about GIMP; has to be an interaction with GIMP and Win7, but it's so random that I can't seem to pin it. I've noticed that it occurrs most often when my email notifier blinks; weird; lol}) am pretty happy with 2.6.10 especially now that I have Python capability.

You've already pinned it! The problem is Win7!

NO ..i believe the problem is not 7 -64 bit, the problem is that for some reason you used the unstable gimp installer for 64 bits

not only , as it is advised is a unstable version (even if has the same number of a stable release, ) but doesn't offer even in theory advantages for the very simple fact that most of (if not all!) the internal gimp plugin still go a 32 bit



poor 7..i belive that this time 7 is totally innocent, also because my notebook has a dual boot 7 -ubuntu and on 7 my gimp, even if loded with tons of extra plugin and script and misused to make crazy manip often on images of gigantic size doesn't crash... well 2.7.1 does crash sometime but very very seldom and anyway is supposed to be unstable

I use 32-bit GIMP PC so that's not it. I believe its somehow related to interupt handling by Win7. Under an almost random fashion, if you do a dropdown menu in GIMP, occasionally, GIMP starts to take a high amount of CPU cycles (in effect, it locks up). Since GIMP is the only program I run in Win7 that has this issue, it has to be an inadvertent consequence on how GIMP interacts with interupt requests. I'm no programmer (use to be a Hardware Electronics Design Engineer), but am quit aware of interupts. Maybe GIMP needs to add a interupt timeout error condition so it can get itself out of the loop when this happens, but I have no idea how to implement this condition interupt jump. I end up just opening Task manager and hose my GIMP session (and of course loose all my work; what a pain). I continue to use GIMP since I'm 1000 times better at it then PS (but I can do PS if push comes to shove; I still like the GIMP and have been a dedicated user for nearly a decade now). I'm not the only one having this issue PC, but since I can't duplicate the condition consistently, I won't (well wouldn't anyway, since the Buzilla crew flamed me badly to the point that I have little respect for them) initiate a Bugzilla without being able to consistently recreate the problem. Anyway, if you have any other thoughts, I'm all ears (or eyes in this case; lol).

I have spoken to many Win7 users who love the interface but hate the crashes. But then again, that can be computers in general (excluding VMS systems).

ah sorry lylejk i tought you was still using the 64 bit gimp

I can't help now i am freaking out because hellish drivers problems on my desktop (after i spend 24h to reinstall and tune XP...but i had the PC speakers switched off the radio on ,so i didn't notice that the only sound that the computer could emit are from the fans...)...

If that's with Meerkat, I feel your pain. I'm actually back with Lynx and content. Might try Meerkat 32-bit later (tried 64-bit fresh install and it installed fine, but it wouldn't allow me to run updates. Went ahead and just hosed the new VM; deleted the ISO too; lol).

I, too, used 32 bit GIMP in Win 7. Even if you "Saved" your work in mid-session, in GIMP, and it crashed, chances were, you'd lose all the progress (including the saved progress) after rebooting GIMP. No idea why that was, because you automatically think a saved session is written to the disk, but for what ever odd reason, a crash would wipe that slate clean, and your saved session wouldn't be evident when you re-opened the file in GIMP. The crash produced an error prompt that warned you of that very fact. So all these people who kept telling me to "SAVE" my work and it shouldn't be a problem. That would require rebooting GIMP every single time I made a change, or renaming the file while performing a save as. Meaning multiple duplicates of images in different stages. NO THANKS!

So bye bye Windows 7. Win 7 may be "innocent" but no one was resolving the issue, and GIMP devs get nasty when you submit bugs that can't be reproduced via a set of structured actions. I don't have the skill sets to find the culprit. When your car doesn't run right, you take it to a mechanic and he either works to fix it or recommends alternatives. When it comes to computers, users are at the mercy of all. If a program doesn't work, there is really no "mechanic" to take it to. You either have to hope someone has the same problem and figured out a way to resolve it, or suffer quietly.

The big difference for me, is that most open source developers/programmers are pretty decent people, and want to help you. Proprietary developers don't give two hoots about whether something works for you or not. They'll take your money and smile, ignore thereafter. Case in point, Paint Shop Pro. After Corel bought Jasc out, it went to h-e-double hockey sticks in a handbasket. Version 9 (if memory serves me right) was the last major release of PSP, before Corel took over. Each version since 9 has gotten progressively worse. I decided I would no longer "hope" it would work and keep trying updated PSP. It's just repackaged, failed software. Support for it is equally as bad. If they can't fix it in one email session, they basically ignore you from that point on.

In a nutshell, whether its Win 7 or GIMP, you go where it works, and for me, that's currently in Linux. No crashes. Runs way faster than Windows ever will. I'm happy. My perfect world would be being able to bring ALL my plug-ins with me to GIMP, but I'll keep dreaming on that. Who knows, someday that may be a reality.

No this time poor Meerkat is innocent that was a problem with the laptop happily solved
Well not totally but the only issue is at loading time, grub show a weird series of options of witch only 1/3 are working ...and 3GB went MIA (i suppose in that 3GB is another instance of Grub or at least mount points for dead partitions ..)

But if works don't fix and everything 7 and Lucid (i too deleted 10.10) works at best...3GB lost on 500 are not a big problem for me, and somehow i believe the impact of that so messy loading screen much more effective of any strong PW

the problem is xp on my desktop and realteak audio driver...that on a original driver CD refuse to install, on Realteak side doesn't show anything useful on the search ...i should install something to detect audio card spec and write to manifacture help desk to solve

and i wish not reinstall linux there till is not solved ... replace win in a double boot system is a pita at least for me

There will be a beta out before 2011, you'll see. Keep watching, i will.
I am also pretty convinced a version of the new Cage Tool will be added for testing with the beta. =)

GOOD NEW FOR LINUX USERS:

Gimp Nightly builds: see http://www.chromecode.com/2009/10/night ... uilds.html
Last 2.7.2

@GnuTux ,Oregonian
Could you copy the second line above at the beginning, in the very first message of this topic ?

@mahvin


So teach yourself to be that mechanic.
Binary distro's won't.
Linux from scratch, Gentoo Linux and to a certain extent Arch Linux will.
Gentoo is the most userfriendly.

In enterprises you'll find a system administrator.
At home there's need for one too regardless of the operating system.
There simply is no computer software (or hardware) that never gives problems.
Gerard.

Working on it. I bought some books and starting from scratch. It would be cool if I had a local mentor to keep me on the straight and narrow when I veer off course.

Thanks for the link PC.
I have a separate partition for fallback and experiments.
I installed babl,gegl and gimp-2.7.2 on it.
I deleted gimp-2.7.1 and babl,gegl first.
With 2.7.1 I had it crash on gegl.
This one didn't.
Haven't done further testing yet.
Gerard.

@mahvin,
I volunteer to be that mentor provided your choice is Gentoo.
I have lost touch with other distro's since being on Gentoo more than 6 years.
Gerard.

Edit:Here's a link to some very good reading:
http://swift.siphos.be/linux_sea/

I've always been my own mechanic. I still hardly know crap, but I know how to find out. I compiled MyPaint for openSUSE when there wasn't any recent package, and I fixed a network issue that apparently no one else had heard of. Little things like that make me happy. ^_^

I just compiled gimp from git (2.7.2) this morning on Ubuntu 10.04 running on VirtualBox with an XP host.

I'm quite impressed with the features (and that I was able to use my Wacom tablet though virtualbox!) It was really easy.

The UI improvements to selection tools are nice, as are the changes to the paths.

Looks like no layer group masks yet (they were there in an earlier version). I asked on IRC and was told that there wre problems with maks in layer groups so it was disabled at the moment.

Well it's still buggy.
And gegl again.
I haven't been able to pinpoint it to gegl-0.1.3 or Gimp-2.7.2.
Anyway when you do Tools > gegl operation >brightness-contrast it freezes.
Same with other gegl operations.
Here on Gimp-2.6.11 and gegl-0.0.22 it works ok.
Gerard.