Subj : Re: GIMP Up To : Barry Martin From : Ky Moffet Date : Thu Sep 04 2025 08:44:00 BARRY MARTIN wrote: > Hi Ky! > > KM> Now, something I have gotten away with -- for a while our repo > KM> didn't have SeaMonkey in it. I downloaded the RPM, but couldn't > KM> figure out how to install it, and in any case it is generally > KM> BAD JUJU to install programs from outside your distro's repository. > KM> (Things are compiled for YOUR distro, not for the whole world, > KM> and often DO NOT WORK with other distros.) > > The old "interchangeable parts won't" thing. On the surface looks > the same, but underneath.... Yep, sadly that is very much the case, and it's going to get radically worse as support gets dropped for older stuff. There was recently a hoo-rah over at -- I forget if it was Fedora or KDE -- about dropping all 32bit application support -- they got so much screaming they backed off that, at least for now -- seems there are still functions with no x64 replacement, and as someone pointed out, every time you drop support for the older stuff, you lose that subset of programming skills, and the "new" stuff becomes that much buggier. > KM> Naturally, something psuedo-installed like this does not update, > KM> since the OS doesn't know it's there. SeaMonkey needs updates KM> > very rarely, there's really only been one major update in the KM> > past decade, otherwise it probably would have died early and KM> > often. > > Right: if the OS is unaware of the utility (in this instance > SeaMonkey) nothing to tell it to check for updates. So the good news > is gets left alone and continues to run, though eventually it gets > detected or som e update changes what allowed (SeaMonkey) to run and > bye-bye. Essentially, yeah. > ..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. Pick a spot that's all your own, unzip it, fish out the executable (sometimes obvious, sometimes there's no finding it), run it. No different than we did in DOS, before Windows installers made things more complicated. > 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. Yeah, VM is more reliable as a long-term solution, but if it's a low resources PC you may not have that option. My Win11 netbook will run VirtualBox, but VBox on that low-resources netbook cannot run WinXP -- the most "hungry" VM it can run is Win2K (which can scrape by on very scant resources), with whatever limitations Win2K brings with it. (I just use it to get a non-glare-white screen in my little editor that maxes out at 32k of RAM, so it's fine, but there's no way the VM would run even an old GIMP.) >> 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. So you find last year's Fatdog ISO, which would necessarily have last year's GIMP, and use that. In a VM, no one can hear you scr-- er, no one cares if you never update it. Or you just find last year's GIMP, and install it in your mini VM of Puppy or whatever small distro, and never update the VM. Not so difficult. Every version known to man: https://download.gimp.org/gimp/ þ RNET 2.10U: ILink: Techware BBS þ Hollywood, Ca þ www.techware2k.com --- QScan/PCB v1.20a / 01-0462 * Origin: ILink: CFBBS | cfbbs.no-ip.com (454:1/1) .