LINUXMAKER, OpenSource, Tutorials

How can GIMP 2.10.6 be installed on Debian Stretch?

GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a good free alternative to Photoshop from Adobe and comes with numerous professional editing features for images and photos. And a better equipped freeware image editing really does not exist. At the beginning of spring 2018, the previous long-term version 2.8 was upgraded to 2.10 and now even to 2.10.6 (as of November 2018). This of course gives problems for those who want to use the new features of GIMP 2.10.6, but also prefer a stable Debian Linux to a testing version (currently Buster) or even Sid.

GIMP recommends installing via Flatpak on the Websites. Flatpak is a tool for software development, package management and software visualization of desktop applications on Linux systems. It provides a sandbox environment for this, in which the user can run applications isolated from the rest of the system. To be honest, that is a bit exaggerated, especially since one suddenly has to maintain several package management systems next to each other. That's why I present the solution here via a Docker container. I also released this solution on HubDocker. This Docker image runs immediately on your system. Thus, the integration of the service "Personal Package Archive" (PPA) is obsolete, which again means a certain dependence on the respective providers.

Installing Docker

# curl -sSL get.docker.com > /tmp/install.sh
# chmod +x /tmp/install.sh
# /tmp/install.sh
# rm /tmp/install.sh
# docker version

In order to be able to run Docker as a normal user, you also need to add your user to the "docker" group:

usermod -aG docker IhrUsername

Thus, you are able to use the Docker image

docker pull linuxmaker/gimp-2.10.6de

after one.

Create docker image for GIMP 2.10.6 yourself

How this image is built with GIMP 2.10.6, I want to demonstrate here. Of course, this also works with any other software that you want to try and use and that is not yet available on Debian Stable.

mkdir gimp-2.10.6
vi Dockerfile

Content of the Docker file

FROM debian:buster
RUN apt-get update && \
    apt-get install -y locales
RUN sed -i -e 's/# de_DE.UTF-8 UTF-8/de_DE.UTF-8 UTF-8/' /etc/locale.gen && \    
    locale-gen
ENV LANG de_DE.UTF-8
ENV LANGUAGE de_DE:de
ENV LC_ALL de_DE.UTF-8
RUN apt-get install -y gtk2-engines-pixbuf && \
    apt-get install -y gimp && \
    apt-get install -y iso-codes

CMD /usr/bin/gimp

Create and start Docker image

Now the image is created as follows:

docker build -t linuxmaker/gimp-2.10.6de .

Then start GIMP 2.10.6 with these two commands:

docker run -it --rm --net=host -e DISPLAY=$DISPLAY -v $HOME:/hosthome:ro -e XAUTHORITY=/hosthome/.Xauthority -w /hosthome linuxmaker/gimp-2.10.6de

or

x11docker --gpu --homedir /home/username/ linuxmaker/gimp-2.10.6de

x11docker is available here.
For "hostname" or "username", specify the locations where your home directory resides. Thus you have a running GIMP without making your Debian system unstable due to different repository states