# Fun With The Gimp



## Silver Hawk

I know Rich, Roy, Stan, myself and a few others have been paying around with Linux, so I thought I'd really give The Gimp a good going over














I'm pretty impressed with its functionality....

Here are some daft images; dont ask me what function I used on which photo, I cant remeber; there are just hundreds of options


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## Silver Hawk




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## Silver Hawk




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## Silver Hawk




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## Roy

Very cool Paul,

I've had to put Linux on hold for a while, too many other things are going on.


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## Silver Hawk

Last One!

Paul


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## Stan

I've heard that the Gimp is very powerful and from our work Paul, it seems it is.









I'm getting a small hard drive from my best buddy soon, I'll use it as a Linux test bed when it arrives.

Been too busy piddling about with my DVD burner just lately.


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## adrian

Cool!


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## rhaythorne

Wow, some very impressive results there! One up for the "Dark Side"


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## jasonm

Noce one Paul...very cool!!









Jason


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## phlogistician

Well, you've answered one question, just what tool people use on their pictures before putting them on ebay!


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## Silver Hawk

Oooh, I forgot to mention....The Gimp is now available free-of-charge for all you Micro$oft / Windoze lovers..









Find it here.

Cheers

Paul


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## pg tips

I though Linux was just an OS but it obviously is much more.

What exactly can it do Paul and what's it's benefits over Mr Gates' products?


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## Silver Hawk

PG,

You are right --- Linux is just an OS --- it's one of the many flavours of Unix like SunOS, BSD, SCO Unix, Ultrix etc etc. And Windows is also just an OS --- favours include 3.1, W95, W98, NT, XP etc. But both are nothing without the applications that run on top of those OSes....

Now in the Linux world, you have people like Red Hat, Fedora, SuSe and Mandrake packaging up Linux with a whole bundle of application software...so never buy just the Linux OS anymore. For instance with Mandrake, in addition to the Linus OS, you get 2-3 browsers, 2-3 email clients, Office.org (similiar to MS Office), loads of graphics packages incl. Gimp, hundreds of games, all sorts of text editors, in fact everything you currently have under Windoze and more...

Following IMHO only









Advantages over Mr. Gates: Cost (it's free), stability, security, choice (because the apps are open source, many developers all over the world contribute to the code); didn't get want you wanted in your "package" --- no problem, just find it on the net, download and install. There are other









Disadvantages over Mr. Gates: sometimes driver s/w (graphics, sound boards etc) doesn't appear as quickly for Linux as it does for Windoze. S/W installs are not as straight forward as under Windoze --- you do need to know a bit more under Linux. There are others









Cheers

Paul


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## Stan

I reckon Paul (S/H) is bang on in his assessment of Linux. There are a couple of things that are beginning to bother me about Windows, not the OS itself but â€œenvironmentalâ€ issues.

Micro$oft released service pack 2 for Windows XP a few days back, this package addresses mostly issues to do with security. It is really a â€œNagâ€ that tries to make the user set up firewall and anti-virus software and has some stern restrictions governing active x controls etc. Donâ€™t get me wrong, I think XP SP2 goes some way to addressing the vulnerabilities in Windows or rather it tries to defeat intrusion by nasty buggerâ€™s.

The release of XP SP2 does highlight just how vulnerable the Windows environment is because â€œpeopleâ€ want to target it for malice and nastiness.

But, what about userâ€™s of older, less well supported versions of Windows like Win98? They are stuffed! They will need a newer version (XP) to get full security support and, not withstanding, a suitably powerful machine to run it on.

What should they do? Get a new machine with the latest patchware from Micro$oft or go Linux?

Iâ€™d take a very, very serious look at Linux and take the time to learn how it works, Iâ€™m going to get Suse installed on an old machine when I get the time and check it out. I donâ€™t want to be open to Windows vulnerabilities, more expense for new software and ever more powerful machinery.

I would urge users of Windows pre- XP to get (and update regularly) good virus checker, firewall and spyware detection software. There is a lot of good free stuff to be had, I can point you to it if you need it.

I shall be looking to migrate to Linux at some point if my testing of it proves it can do the job I need it to.


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## phlogistician

Linux probably isn't any more secure than Windows in the long run though. A mate of mine put a Linux box on the end of a cable modem sans firewall and it got hacked within three days, and the hacker had set up a bulletin board.

One of my tasks is upgrading Unix systems so they have the latest security patches on, and they come out faster and more often than MS hot fixes. Linux appears in these lists of fixes pretty regularly, check the CERT site.

Don't get me wrong, I love Linux, I have it running on one of my computers at home (I'm a geek, I have several computers), but I tried deploying Linux as a desktop solution to various allegedly intelligent academics some years back, and they just didn't get on with it. So it's a great geek toy, but it's still for experts and the adept really.


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## Stan

Back to being a geek for me then.


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