More than six years have passed since they began their development and now you can try out their first release candidate. The project behind the most popular alternative to Photoshop, with permission from Photopea, announced This week the launch of GIMP 3.0-RC1What is a Release Candidate? Well, a version that the developers already consider stable, but it needs to be tested more because there are sure to be small problems that they will have to solve before releasing the final version. Kernel versions are a little different. With a release every two months, all previous versions receive this label.
What's new in GIMP 3.0-RC1? A lot of good stuff, but we'll wait for the final version to be released to publish a more detailed article. This one is about what's new in GIMP XNUMX-RCXNUMX. how close is that stable version and about how to test RC1 on Ubuntu. Because it is close, very close… but it is not possible to say when it will arrive, first, because we do not know, and second, because, as they explain, if they were to bring forward a date and there was not enough time, it would be considered an unfulfilled promise, as has been happening in recent months.
Regarding the new features, we can briefly discuss some of them, such as: will be uploaded to GTK3, will use a new API for plugins that will facilitate the integration of the same and even a new logo adapted to the times in which we find ourselves. The program's startup image has also changed, support for different formats has been improved and the updates of the editions are non-destructive.
Can't wait to use all this? Here's the best way to do it on Ubuntu, which is to use the snap package that's already available.
How to test GIMP 3.0-RC1 on Ubuntu
GIMP 3.0-RC1 It is available in different formats, but in Ubuntu, which includes support for snap packages and software in the same format by default, it is worth doing it through the snap package.
There are several ways to install them. One is to go to the official software store, search for “gimp” without the quotes, access its page, choose RC1 from the options and click “Install”. As there are different software stores and distributions of all kinds, what I recommend is to use the terminal. To know the exact command at the time of installation, it is worth going to your snapcraft page and see what it says there.
On the right, near the “Install” button, there is a dropdown with the text “latest/stable” followed by the version number of the latest stable release. Click on it and then on the newest release, which is currently 3.0.0-RC1.
You will be taken to another page where you will see the command:
sudo snap install gimp --channel=preview/stable
The best thing is that being a snap package, If we also want to use the native and stable version of GIMP, it will not interfere. You can have both on the same operating system, one for testing and the other to make sure that we don't find any errors. We can do the same with VLC 4.0, the other software that we have been waiting for for years, as we explained in our sister blog LinuxAdictos.
Valid for any Linux
Launching the app is no big deal: it appears in the app drawer or start menu. The only thing is that, being a snap, the launch may take a little longer than expected. Otherwise, a fully functional GIMP 3.0-RC1.
What I've explained here is valid for any Linux distribution that can add support for snap packages. Personally, I don't recommend adding it, I don't like them, but if it's already enabled for whatever reason, using the GIMP 3.0-RC1 snap is very easy.
GIMP 3.0 Stable has no scheduled release date yet. It could arrive in a few weeks or within several months. This release just proves that we will be able to use it soon.