Software: GIMP and GEGL in 2019, Scrcpy on openSUSE, TenFourFox

2019 was the second year in a row where we shipped updates with new features in the stable branch. Our assumption was that this could change the public’s perception of the ongoing development efforts and shift the balance towards having more contributors. Here is why.

Between 2012 and 2018 (v2.8 and v2.10 releases respectively), we worked hard and added a ton of improvements and new features, we demoed them on social networks, mentioned them in annual reports etc., and yet we kept hearing how GIMP was dead because those changes were not in any stable releases. The same thing was happening before in the four years between v2.6 and v2.8.

It's 2020 and GIMP remains one of the last holdouts for a major software application still relying upon the GTK2 tool-kit even with GTK4 potentially coming around the end of the calendar year. Fortunately, at least, the GIMP 2.99.x development releases on the path to the GTK3-based GIMP 3.0 should be starting up soon.

The GIMP project put out their 2019 recap this weekend highlighting some of their advancements for the past year. Among the achievements have been greater usability of this open-source image editor, various tooling improvements, significant performance improvements throughout, a variety of file format handling improvements, new filters, and more.

Every once in a while, I am in the position where I am tethering my computer to my phone and lazy me doesn’t like to interface with the phone when my fingers are on a real keyboard. I can’t say exactly why I am so anti-mobile at times but it’s just how it is sometimes.

I was introduced to this application called Scrcpy which I think look like “screen copy” so that is how I verbally communicate it.

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If nothing else, this is a fun application to play with, even for the novelty of it. The only thing I can say that I wish it would do is be able to view the Android screen without turning on the backlight.

This is only just a few highlights of this really cool application. What are the use cases for this? I can see many, really. I am not a huge fan of the phone interface. I prefer typing on a real keyboard. I have a tendency to leave my phone in another room on a charger. I am able to check mobile apps only from my computer as opposed to directly handling the phone. Another use case would be to record the screen for the purpose of a demonstration. I suppose the limitations of this is bound by the limitations of your own imagination.

TenFourFox Feature Parity Release 18 final is now available for testing (downloads, hashes, release notes). There are no other changes from the beta other than to update the usual certs and such. As usual, assuming no late-breaking critical bugs, it will become final Monday evening Pacific time.