The reasons make sense to me, although I use GIMP and
rarely use F-Spot. Of course, its easy enough to add
gimp to my new install setup script and I'd imagine the
majority of people who use it won't find this to be much
of a concern either.
Image editing tool GIMP is to be dropped from the default installation of Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx.
There are a number of reasons cited for this change:
- the general user doesn’t use it
- its user-interface is too complex
- it’s an application for professionals
- desktop users just want to edit photos and they can do that in F-Spot
- it’s a photoshop replacement and photoshop isn’t included by default in Windows…
- it takes up room on the disc
I’m guessing that Ubuntu’s ISO footprint was a big reason for the drop, because the more you add to the OS, the more megabytes are eaten up, and when you need that ISO to fit onto a CD, something might have to give.
I don’t see this being much of a problem though, as it’s a pretty straightforward task to download and install applications. And for those folks that don’t need GIMP, there’s always F-Spot there to pick up the slack.
Do people use GIMP, or is it too complex?
Maybe Adobe should distribute GIMP as a sales tool for convincing people to buy Photoshop. 
