Because it’s made by volunteers, in their free time, who either don’t have the time or skill or goal to make it competitive

Didn’t stop Blender. Didn’t stop Firefox. Didn’t stop Linux itself.

If someone is not able or willing to learn their way around something new, that’s literally their problem

I’ve already covered in this comment chain. Krita and Affinity Photo do things differently and nobody complains because they can see actual value in the change. Being “different” isn’t the source of GIMPs reputation, being shit is.

Why would it need to be similar? If you want Photoshop, well then use Photoshop.

I moved to Affinity Photo over a year ago, despite it being different. I don’t even keep a token pirated version of Photoshop around for compatibility anymore.

Sometimes doing something different might also end up being the better idea. Won’t know until you tried.

I tried multiple times and it simply isn’t. That’s been their most common feedback for 20 years but people like you still refuse to acknowledge that people might have a point.

And yes, good software is good code. That’s just a fact.

Yet somehow, no matter how good the code might be, ugly software with shit UX just never seems to gain widespread popularity. Don’t worry, I’m sure it’s not because “good software” is holistic, it’s because the entire world is wrong about GIMP except for you.

It is the next best completely free alternative.

And if that was how people actually presented it, I wouldn’t be objecting. Instead, people pretend it’s as good as Photoshop and anyone who disagrees is blamed for not programming it themselves and attacked for suggesting that commercial tools are far better.

How is that an argument? How do you get the idea that GIMP is basically required to be competitive, just because it’s old?

Looks like you’re more interested in defending Linux software than actually seeing my point.

So why isn’t it competitive? It’s not because it’s new and hasn’t had time to mature. It’s not because developers haven’t put time into it (despite the ridiculous “fix it yourself” bullshit that people keep pushing). It’s not because the problem it aimed to solve has been solved.

It’s because the people involved with GIMP have the usual Linux community resentment about what “good software” actually is. It’s fuck ugly, but they don’t think that should matter, so it doesn’t get addressed. It doesn’t follow patterns that similar software follows, because they’re used to it, so everyone else should be too.

It’s the same pervasive “good software is good code and nothing else” mentality the plagues the OSS community.

But who cares? Use your shit software. Defend it to your dying breath. It’s not going to fix systemic problems with the project nor fool anyone who actually tries it.

Nobody is acting shocked. Least the people who learned to use GIMP.

So the people who learn GIMP are fully aware why it gets zero industry use? Thanks, that was my point.

The problem is people like you who are outraged, when asking for a free Photoshop alternative, that the next best thing is not to their likening.

I’m not outraged in the slightest, nor am I asking for a free Photoshop alternative. But I’ve seen people claiming GIMP is a viable alternative to Photoshop for 20 years and for anything past the most basic use cases, it isn’t. You may as well be telling people to use Nano instead of Visual Studio and when they complain about the experience, tell them to code the features themselves.

GIMP has had literally decades of development and even with Photoshop in the worst state it’s ever been in, it isn’t competitive. There are clearly systemic issues with the project and I’m certain this “head in the sand” mentality is at least partly to blame.

No, but “fix it yourself” is apparently a completely acceptable response if someone criticizes GIMP.

Anyway, I don’t care how bad the tools you use are, but it’s time to stop acting shocked when industry professionals have no interest in GIMP and don’t take anyone who advocates it as a Photoshop alternative seriously.

To add to this, it’s not like other apps have just blindly copied Photoshop. Affinity Photo has shape tools that are far less convoluted than Photoshop but they still feel instantly familiar.

Even when they couldn’t stick to common patterns (such as the eyedropper tool) they still manage to communicate how the feature works just by designing intelligently, no Googling required.

But every time I’ve used gimp, common tasks feels like a collection of workarounds for missing features. Someone elsewhere in this thread asked how to place an ellipse and got told that wasn’t something commonly needed but to make a selection and fill it using the paint bucket tool (and a modifier key).

That solution is jankier than MS Paint, which at least offers you an actual tool and a short period where you can make non-destructive modifications to the stroke, fill, size and position.

But since you’ve technically got the circle you asked for, it’s treated as “people who don’t like GIMP are just haters” rather than “people don’t want to use bad tools for their job”

Have you thought about applying for a job at Adobe and fixing it?

GIMP is bad. If the problem was simply that it was “different to PS” then other apps like Krita and Affinity Photo would have the same reputation.

If a user goes looking for a tool or feature and it’s not in the first place they look, that’s a problem of “didn’t really practice that much”. If experienced people need to look up how to do basic operations and their reaction is “that’s fucking stupid”, then the software is bad.

To then say “well why don’t you help the Dev team then” is insane. I’m not spending hundreds of hours digging GIMP out of bad design decisions when I could just use better software and I haven’t seen any evidence that my PR would even be accepted.

Nobody needs excuses and apologism, they need Blender for image editing and GIMP just isn’t that.

It also makes it nearly impossible for independent researchers to uncover bot networks and AstroTurfing, just in time for fully automated AI propaganda.

The very first prompt this AGI is given will be “secure as much wealth as possible without breaking any laws that might see us punished”.

That’s not what the CEO of the company thought.

They don’t care about ill will, they care about money. They made nothing from third party apps and millions from gutting the API and selling it to AI companies.

It also allows people to use much higher quality products. She’s pulling a power tool out in the picture and goddamn, there’s some garbage tools out there, even from quality brands. Renting a $1000 tool sounds better than buying a $100 tool and encouraging the race to the bottom.

Unfortunately, that nightmare is absolutely on its way. The moment companies work out how to secure their initial prompts, they’ll start selling product placement. As the technology continues to become more accessible, it will be used for astroturfing and manipulating financial markets.

A decade from now, social media is just going to be an endless flood of secret AI sales reps trying to convince other secret AI sales reps to buy their shit products, vote for their shit candidates or follow their shit investment advice.

I think there’s a baseline that Linux developers need to take more seriously. The PopOS people are good reference, especially their upcoming DE.

Imagine you had a basic desktop; top bar, dock and desktop widgets.

Each of those is a different app and each app comes in 4 different flavors: “Fast but ugly”, “Pretty”, “Tinkerer’s dream” and “Well designed but under developed”.

Sounds great right? Just pick whichever ones you like best. But along the way, things that would be considered “requirements so basic we don’t even need to state them” are not met.

So you value pretty and get the pretty versions. But each of them was developed by a different team, each with different opinions about what “pretty” is. Your desktop doesn’t have a cohesive look with colours and fonts mismatched in a way that no monolithic project would ever tolerate.

So you grab one pretty app, and two tinkerer’s dream apps. You can make them match yourself! That’s the power of Linux. You put a week of work into bringing your desktop up to this default standard, fighting a mountain of faff along the way. Each app uses a different language for their code and configs. Each app supports different features. You find yourself wishing they followed the “well designed but underdeveloped” app, but it hasn’t had an update for years.

Finally, your desktop is ready for unixporn… as long as you don’t open your file browser.

It catches the deeply stupid, but not the ones blessed with 3 braincells. Even the ones struggling by on 2 will learn from those mistakes.

If you don’t want to be treated like a caller from a right-wing talkback radio station, try not sounding exactly like one.

Sure, I can broaden the options: You’re either dumb as fuck, leaving out important context that won’t apply to most people or just outright lying.

Whatever the answer is, you’re clearly trying to give the impression that you’re a bootstrap-pulling neoliberal that is morally above accepting welfare.

While I broadly agree, I feel like the focus of these fragments is just scratching their own personal itch, rather than building an improvement. I quickly lose interest in “software that only values X” vs “software that only values Y”. I just want software that’s good.

“What if instead of convincing gullible people to buy healing crystals, magic water and psychic services, we used those techniques to make them hate minorities?”.

I’d say having these groups coordinate in a platform where government officials are able to gain easy access is better than banning them and forcing them to move to more secure methods of communication

It’s not, because extremism spreads like herpes. Making these platforms more accessible to government officials also makes them more accessible to vulnerable, stupid people – and there’s 1000 of them for every 1 fed who wants to stop a terrorist attack.

Also, the people at the core of these groups are absolutely aware of secure communication. The Facebook page might say “Rally for Freedom, 2A welcome” but behind that curtain, human dogshit are brainstorming things like “how can we get counter protesters killed”.

As dumb as most of the far-right is, very few are stupid enough to plan crimes and conspiracies on Facebook.