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Category: Gimp 2.8 (Page 1 of 5)

Gimp templates gone or deleted fix

2019-07-03 / / 0 Comments

I ran into this issue on Ubuntu 16.04 and Gimp version 2.8.22, while trying to load the templates I couldn’t do that. They were grayed out and nothing I tried worked. In this post I’ll show you how to fix templates and get Gimp templates back running!

Nothing else worked

Needless to say that nothing I found online worked, hence me blogging about this issue, and while it’s a simple issue that doesn’t affect the program usability, it is indeed an annoying one!

Gimp templates not running
Gimp templates not running

Fixes that include reinstalling Gimp and updating it or rolling it back were useless. 
Some suggested copying a file named “templaterc” from another computer, and it also didn’t work for me.

The fix

  • Navigate to home folder in Ubuntu and show hidden folders (click Ctrl + H if you are using Nautilus).

  • Look for a folder called .gimp-2.8.

  • Once inside the folder, delete the contents of the folder and restart Gimp if open. Please note that if you have any brushes or scripts added that you will lose them all, and I advise taking a backup copy of that folder if that’s the case.

  • Run Gimp, you will have your templates like usual!

 

Gimp templates back running
Gimp templates back running

Note: If you use Windows, go to the user folder to find these settings, not the program files installation folder. 

I hope you find this trick useful. Let me know what you think in the comments section below, and don’t forget to share this on social media. 

My 3 year journey with GNU Linux

2016-09-01 / / 0 Comments

Linux has been around for 25 years! Last week the world celebrated the 25th anniversary since Linus Torvalds wrote the Minix kernel.
I’ve been using Gun/Linux based operating system as my main OS for three years now, and it’s been very rewarding! In this post I’ll talk about a journey with GNU/Linux and how it turned into what I use on daily basis and feels right to me rather than the new interesting idea I saw in a tech magazine!

My beginnings with Linux

Although I learned about Gnu/Linux over ten years ago (thanks to the wonderful LTT magazine) I didn’t fully convert to open source until I graduated from college. We depended on Microsoft based products for school such as SQL server and Visual studio, which were essential softwares for a computer science major and I couldn’t risk converting to Linux and messing up my school work so it had to wait, I was itching to get rid of Microsoft Windows and start fresh with an all open source system.

Even then I relied on open source software to do my daily tasks such as Gimp and Apache Open office (LibreOffice came into play in 2011) and the only proprietary software was Windows itself. Once I graduated it was time to kiss Windows good bye.

My Windows setup

My computer had Windows 7 installed on it and I have to admit. It was running like a charm!
I had everything I wanted and had the system fine tuned and optimized to my liking. I downloaded tools and learned how to harness their power to the max, I even blogged about it here on this blog at the time.
But I was willing to give all that up for the sake of open source! Apparently I don’t have a problem of fixing what doesn’t need to be fixed.
Research.
Before converting to Linux I did a lot of research and took my time looking for the best alternatives for tools I used daily, luckily many tools are cross platform and open source so these were a given like VLC and Firefox.
I also took my time testing it as a live version and I even installed it under Windows as a software (older versions of ubuntu supported that).
I didn’t do much distro hopping, I liked Ubuntu from the start and still use it until now.
Distro hopping is one of the major criticism points GNU/Linux receives as people say there are too much distros out there for a person to try and it can be confusing and counter productive.
I have a theory about that!

Distro hopping

Linux is all about freedom and you can try what ever you like, it would be a good idea if you used a virtual machine to test so you don’t ruin your HDD with the excessive installation and removal of systems.

Preparing to convert

After I listed my software and got the alternatives (executor wasn’t ported to Linux) I decided to install Zorin, built on Ubuntu and came fully featured with everything new comers to Ubuntu needed. 

Zorin-Os-7
The Linux gateway for Windows users.

From flash support and restricted extras all the way down to Wine and Playonlinux to make sure your tools from Windows didn’t go to waste.
It looked and behaved like Windows 7 and I didn’t like that very much. Trying to change it messed it all up and nothing worked, not even installing it fresh?! I was a beginner and didn’t know what to do so I decided to move on to something new.

Installing Ubuntu

So I installed Ubuntu 13.04. It was really good and got even better when I added xfce interface, while googling for it I learned that latest version of Ubuntu won’t be released for another 2 months, and was going to be an LTS (long support version). 

At the time I had a separate laptop for work and I didn’t think that was really productive!

My first LTS and dual booting

As soon as Ubuntu 14.04 was out I got it and installed it clean, I chose the Xubuntu version because I enjoyed the XFE interface.
It was the best time ever getting to know the new distro and customizing it to my liking.
I had to install Windows for work. And since I gave away the work laptop I decided to dual boot Windows 8.1 and Xubuntu on my computer.
I used Windows to work and it was a good solid experience with the metro interface, but I didn’t feel home until I restarted and went to Xubuntu, I sighed in relief as I saw the loading screen knowing that I enjoyed working on this system and I wrote a list of reasons why.

My interface revolution

After a while I felt I needed a change, so I began testing  with different interfaces until I  decided to go with the Gnome interface, but my “home brew” distro was buggy. I was delightfully surprised to know that there is a project where Gnome was used as the interface for Ubuntu (Ubuntu Gnome) and I downloaded it and installed it right away after a successful trail on a virtual machine. It was the end of the dual boot period for me.

Settling down with Ubuntu Gnome

I got Ubuntu Gnome 16.04 as soon as it got out and I couldn’t be happier! I did a review about it here on this blog which proved to be a total success! Hundreds of readers tune in every month to read this tutorial which I keep to update as often as I find new things (I use the same principle all over my blog).

Windows is residing now on the virtual machine, I use it every once in a while.

The 1% percent dogma and the “Personal computer failure”

Many people claim that GNU/Linux failed on the personal computer with user share just above 1%. While it remains to be a success in the server and super computer department.
Just for your information, GNU/Linux’s user share has exceeded the 2% barrier in July.

And to be honest I never really cared for those people’s opinions anyway, I have a system that is well supported, totally free and I get the job done just as good as I did on Windows based systems (and maybe even better) so why all the fuss?

I love Linux, and so does Microsoft!

I could sing the praises of Gnu/Linux and open source on and on and totally miss the point, I enjoy using and contributing to open source, and I don’t have a problem with Microsoft based software, I think it’s really good!

Microsot loves linux
This image is still strange to me!




Gnu/Linux has came a long way from it’s humble beginnings and it’s a force to be reckoned with in the computer world today, even Microsoft has showed it’s love and support and there is a lot of cooperation between Canonical and Microsoft (it doesn’t necessarily make me happy, but times change).

Final words

A long journey of exploring indeed.  I didn’t do it by the book and I took my time experimenting with things and making my mistakes along the way. But I’ve settled into my system and it feels great!  I wouldn’t have it any other way! Much like life itself.

How did you like this post? Are you using open source or thinking of converting to it anytime soon?
Drop a line below and let’s see what we can do 😉

P.S: I have reached 110000 views on my blog 🙂

My review of Ubuntu Gnome 16.04

2016-05-06 / / 0 Comments

It’s been a couple of weeks since Ubuntu 16.04 was out! I decided to take my time and give the new distribution some time before making a review, I think two weeks are enough time, so let’s take a look at Ubuntu Gnome 16.04!!

 

Ubuntu Gnome 16.04 new logo

The distribution

Ubuntu Gnome 16.04 became an official Ubuntu flavor, making use of the Gnome interface, unlike the official Ubuntu that uses Unity as interface, it comes with Gnome software and isn’t a clone of Ubuntu, there are some minor differences in apps, Basero is  the default disk burn utility for example, and gnome software is at 3.20 out of the box.

 

Ubuntu Gnome 16.04 Screenshot
Ubuntu Gnome 16.04 Screenshot

Please note that some of the tools in the screenshot aren’t installed natively, such as Zim-wiki and Sublime text.

Download and Install

I’ve downloaded Ubuntu Gnome via torrent because I read it’s better for the servers, and come to think of it since the electricity goes out very often here, it’s better to download Ubuntu via torrent to save myself the trouble of downloading it all over again! It was downloaded eventually after 6 hours.
Checkout the download link from here.

 

It took 6 hours to download!
Torrent download information

I put it on a USB and began installing, pretty much the same since Ubuntu 10.10.
This version has 3 years of LTS support, why not five years? I’m not sure.

 

Steps to take after installing Ubuntu Gnome 16.04

Most of these steps are on my blog, but it won’t hurt to collect them all together in one neat list, would it?
  • Configuring wireless and Bluetooth, which is really easy to do but very important.
  • Installing the extras, the restricted extras needed to view media files and flash, and some fonts.
  • Installing my softwares, the usual package of stuff: VLC, Inkscape, Gimp,  Xmind and Zimwiki
  • Installing extensions: Clipboard indicator and OpenWeather.
  • Editing input sources to make it change between languages by pressing alt + shift, you can find how to do it from this link.
  • Restore the bookmarks and data (notes), Firefox is pretty easy to restore, and so is Zimwiki! All you have to do is to put the note folder in Home.
  • Customize LibreOffice. To make it more compatible with Arabic.
  • Disable apport, more details in the defects section.
  • Installing powertop for more power save and CPU Frequency to reduce fan noise!
  • Pomodro timer works beautifully with Ubuntu Gnome 16.04 and you have to install it, it’s the best timer app for Ubuntu to date! Read my review about it from here.
  • Disable tracker-store as shown in this askubuntu link. 
  • Disable evolution safely without uninstalling it. Saving nearly 170 MB of RAM.
  • I also decided to skip the Grub menu since I only use Ubuntu 16.04, to do that you need to download and install Grub Customizer with these commands:

    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:danielrichter2007/grub-customizer
    sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install grub-customizer

    After that go to Grub customizer and enter your password, go to settings and uncheck: show menu and look for other operating systems. This way you will get rid of Grub and boot to Ubuntu right away, don’t do this if you dual boot!!< red;”

 

 

Features and improvements

  • I do appreciate the Gnome 3.18 interface! A huge jump from the 3.10 that Ubuntu 14.04.4 ships with, as it has many improvements and tweaks and fixes for annoying bugs in Gnome 3.10 (LTS to LTS upgraders will relate!).
  • The notifications style has changed completely, it’s now displayed in a drop-down menu under the clock.
  • The annoying bottom bar was removed completely, a feature I will never miss! It’s replaced with a neat arrow that’s docked on the bottom left corner of the screen.
    Notification dock in Ubuntu Gnome 16.04
  • The new boot logo is so much better than the old one! That looks like a foot! This is more sleek and streamlined, reminds me of SEGA’s logo somehow!

 

Ubuntu Gnome’s new logo

 

Issues and defects

  • So far the performance is OK and there are few crashes, pretty much the same as Ubuntu 14.04.4 which is pretty stable by the way.
  • I’ve noticed that the network icon sometimes disappears, hopefully an update will fix this, my only fix is to reboot.
  • I would recommend that you disable apport as it will bring up a message every time you reboot.
  • Software isn’t as clear as it should, I can’t tell how big are the softwares and updates, so I use Synaptic on a daily basis to get things done!
  • When disconnecting the wireless network with the hardware key it’s not recognized anymore until several reboots, it’s a known bug but with no fix afaik! The only info I could find was this terminal command: sudo service network-manager restart This command will restart the network manager and allow it to connect without the need to restart several times.
  • The fan noise was too much at times, even when the computer was idle, I thought upgrading from Ubuntu Gnome 14.04.4 to Ubuntu Gnome 16.04 would fix this but it didn’t, until I installed CPU Frequency!
  • Nautilus 3.14 could use an update and we don’t have to wait till 16.10 to get one! I managed to follow a rather risky tutorial to update it to 3.20 and it’s so much better!
  • If you are using an SSD you might want to look at this post to avoid the /dev/sd1 :Recovering Journal issue.
  • Starting up without a user interface at times, and my only cure was to restart the computer, I found a fix that suggests to clear the packages config from Synaptic.
  • Sometimes shutdown can be slow, I found the steps in here worked like a charm!

“Software”

Ubuntu Gnome 16.04 ships with Gnome software 3.20. Which is the software that is supposed to replace Ubuntu Software center, I find them both buggy and unusable, as I use Synaptic to do my package work.

 

Softwares 3.20 on Ubuntu 16.04

I do believe it needs more work to become a reliable software center, it stays in the background and behaves oddly, it doesn’t show the download progress on software being downloaded too, which seems odd!

I winded up un-installing software and reinstalling the good’ol Ubuntu software center!

Final words

Ubuntu Gnome is a great choice for anyone who wants to enjoy Gnome  without having to leave the Ubuntu universe to Fedora or OpenSuse, it provides the purist Gnome experience possible for Ubuntu, and it preformed better than regular Ubuntu installed on older machines (with proper tweaking mentioned here).

The more I use it the more I could tell that this is the distro for me, great job indeed by the team, and I rate it as a must have!

I hope you enjoyed this post, please let me know what you think in the comments section below, and remember: Sharing is caring!!

GIMP 20 years of awesome!

2015-12-28 / / 0 Comments

Last November, GIMP celebrated it’s twentieth anniversary, becoming the official Open source image editing suit.

 GIMP stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program, and through out it’s age GIMP went through a lot of development and improvements, and drew it’s fair share of comparisons and controversy.
GIMP has many scripts and filters to enhance it’s productivity and it’s rage is simply amazing, it can be used for a wide range of work from basic editing to professional grade photography and everything in between. It became my to go-to suit that I use for everything! And this blog has many GIMP tagged posts. In fact my best viewed posts are usually about GIMP! Feel free to check these posts from this link.
GIMP is now at version 2.8.16 (the birthday version) and it’s better than ever, go download it from GIMP.org for your system, it’s cross platform.

It’s never too late to join the movement of open source, even if it’s been 20 years since the first GIMP build. It shows how much passion and experience behind this awesome project.
Besides code, GIMP has a great community that is our there to help and give support for new users and experienced users as well.
Also there is a ton of scripts out there that will make your life much easier, as one of my readers replied to the Obamicon post: “I love it, saved my a ton of work with Illustrator, thank you so much”.

Even if you are an Adobe master and can’t imagine using anything other than PS, download GIMP and give it a spin (even on a virtual machine) and see what all of these people are excited about, you will go back to using it. I guarantee it!

Did you download GIMP? What did you think? Let me know what you have in mind in the comments section below!

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