Subj : GIMP Up To : Ky Moffet From : Barry Martin Date : Fri Sep 05 2025 07:17:00 Hi Ky! > The old "interchangeable parts won't" thing. On the surface looks > the same, but underneath.... KM> Yep, sadly that is very much the case, and it's going to get KM> radically worse as support gets dropped for older stuff. There KM> was recently a hoo-rah over at -- I forget if it was Fedora or KM> KDE -- about dropping all 32bit application support -- they got KM> so much screaming they backed off that, at least for now -- seems KM> there are still functions with no x64 replacement, and as someone KM> pointed out, every time you drop support for the older stuff, you KM> lose that subset of programming skills, and the "new" stuff KM> becomes that much buggier. Right: I have a few old applications that fall in that category. The good news I can run them on a VM but that has some other inconveniences. Tangenting to the Raspberry Pi, apparently a lot of businesses use it, and a lot are still using the old-old ones and cannot upgrade, sometimes the new processor isn't compatible, a lot of times physical constraints: positioning of the ports have moved in newer models and the original wiring harness cannot be altered to accomodate. > ..I understand the concept, just haven't a clue on the details. I > like Virtual Machines to test out: to see if I like it and to see if > it works. My knowledge of what to do to 'bend the utility to fit' > just isn't there. KM> Pick a spot that's all your own, unzip it, fish out the KM> executable (sometimes obvious, sometimes there's no finding it), KM> run it. No different than we did in DOS, before Windows KM> installers made things more complicated. As you indicated sometimes easier said than done! ...A few days ago I was trying to find where the storage location is set: couldn't find it in the on-line manual (which is extensive), couldn't find it wandering around the screen, eventually found a lead on Google but was outdated, Started looking in the config files: I knew where the default storage was located so tried to find that and work backwards. Nope. > KM> I would guess as seldom as GIMP majorly-updates, it might get KM> > away with this too. > Possible -- for you worth trying. For me I'd probably go the > Virtual Machine route, using an older OS. Of course that brings its > own problems: any peripherals have to be first recognized by the host > system to be passed through to the VM. KM> Yeah, VM is more reliable as a long-term solution, but if it's a KM> low resources PC you may not have that option. My Win11 netbook KM> will run VirtualBox, but VBox on that low-resources netbook KM> cannot run WinXP -- the most "hungry" VM it can run is Win2K KM> (which can scrape by on very scant resources), with whatever KM> limitations Win2K brings with it. (I just use it to get a KM> non-glare-white screen in my little editor that maxes out at 32k KM> of RAM, so it's fine, but there's no way the VM would run even an KM> old GIMP.) Well I was thinking more of running the VM on a capable machine, not one barely scraping by, but yes, that low-resource issue is going to be a problem. Heck, this computer (the one I'm on currently) is fairly powerful, and yet when I ran the VM from the hard drive it was annoyingly sluggish. Moved to the NVMe -- scoots right along. >> Maybe just a dedicated system (virtual machine?), isolated from >> the outside world? > KM> Or even Fatdog, which comes with GIMP preinstalled. KM> > https://distro.ibiblio.org/fatdog/web/ > If it's the right version of GIMP that would be the one I'd be going > for! Some of the OSs don't have the necessary components installed > to make the desired utility (here, GIMP) to install or run, so back > to Square One. KM> So you find last year's Fatdog ISO, which would necessarily have KM> last year's GIMP, and use that. In a VM, no one can hear you KM> scr-- er, no one cares if you never update it. Just don't update the VM! ...I wonder if antique VMs are still able to run? KM> Or you just find last year's GIMP, and install it in your mini VM KM> of Puppy or whatever small distro, and never update the VM. Not KM> so difficult. True -- though I have a question and it might be just because the coffee hasn't kicked in. Here I have several Virtual Machines (VMs) running under VirtualBox (VB). One of the VMs is running XP. VB gets updated every so often, which I would presume also updates the VM. Maybe not because of backwards compatabilty. Let's assume that specific VM is not updated. The problem I see is if the VB is not eventually updated it won't run under whatever OS the base machine is using. So the simple solution would seem to be not update the OS, but eventually the hardware will fail, and not updating the OS creates potential security problems. (I need a coffee refill after that one!) ¯ ® ¯ BarryMartin3@MyMetronet.NET ® ¯ ® .... She: I want to listen to the Titanic soundtrack. He: It's syncing now. --- MultiMail/Win32 v0.47 þ wcECHO 4.2 ÷ ILink: The Safe BBS þ Bettendorf, IA --- QScan/PCB v1.20a / 01-0462 * Origin: ILink: CFBBS | cfbbs.no-ip.com (454:1/1) .