The light at the end of the tunnel is already visible. A few hours ago, the project that develops the most popular alternative to Photoshop — with permission from Photopea — has launched GIMP 3.0 RC2, which is the second stable release candidate. This is an important moment, because only 2 Release Candidates were released for the previous major update as well, which in the case of this editor was GIMP 2.10. So, the next time we talk about a new release might finally be GIMP 3.0.
Now, its developers still They have not dared to give an exact date of arrival.The reason was given in the RC1 release notes, where they explained who, in the past, had mentioned in passing some approximate date, did not comply and many, among whom we could include the editors of LXA… at least we talked about the delay.
GIMP 3.0 will also be available as an AppImage
The list of new features is mostly bug fixes, but there are a few surprises. For example, a new API filter has allowed adding support for importing old PSD files, improved compositing modes, and more. an AppImage is available, that is, that type of semi-portable applications — the configuration is not exported — that contain everything necessary in an executable file, and that in theory is compatible with all Linux distributions that share the same architecture.
And I say “in theory” because the AppImage I tried for GIMP 3.0 RC2 didn’t work for me on Manjaro. If anyone is interested in trying their luck, the notes for this release explain how to get it:
- Let this link and we click on the button «Last Pipeline«.
- We select the job with name
dist-appimage-weekly
- Click the button
Browse
. - We navigate to the directory
build/linux/appimage/_Output/
. - Finally, we click on
GIMP-3.0.0-RC2+git-x86_64.AppImage
oGIMP-3.0.0-RC2+git-aarch64.AppImage
to download and install the AppImage. Installation will depend on your Linux distribution and whether you use a wizard like AppImage Launcher or not.
For more information, it is best to read the notes from this release, but GIMP 3.0 is just around the corner.