Before the next major GIMP 3.0, a new maintenance update for the 2.10 series GIMP 2.10.24 now is available to install.
Though it’s not officially announced at the moment of writing, GIMP has provided the 2.10.24 source tarball & Windows exe for downloading in its website.
And both the Flathub repository and unofficial Ubuntu PPA have updated the packages for the new release.
What’s new in GIMP 2.10.24 according to the changelog:
- Fix stack overflow when loading very large XCF files on Windows.
- Point snapping now works outside the canvas.
- Various metadata improvements.
- More robust TIFF import and export.
- GeoTIFF tag support added with appropriate “Save GeoTIFF data” checkbox.
- Various fixes and improvements to the metadata viewer and editor.
- Support fractional DPI for PDF import.
- Support updated Lua API of darktable 3.6 and beyond.
- HEIF: visually lossless export is possible for 10/12 bit depths too.
How to Install GIMP 2.10.24 in Ubuntu:
Method 1: Install GIMP via the universal flatpak package:
If you’re OK with the flatpak package which runs in sandbox, open terminal and run following commands one by one to install it:
1. Firstly add PPA for updated Flatpak package (required for Ubuntu 18.04 only):
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:alexlarsson/flatpak && sudo apt update
2. Install flatpak daemon if you don’t have it:
sudo apt install flatpak
3. Add flathub repository which hosts the software packages:
flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
4. Finally install GIMP flatpak package via command:
flatpak install flathub org.gimp.GIMP
NOTE: as flatpak runs in sandbox, it takes much more disk space for run-time libraries.
5. (Optional) If you want to remove the package, run command:
flatpak uninstall org.gimp.GIMP
Method 2: install GIMP via Ubuntu PPA:
For those prefer the classic .deb packages, the unofficial PPA has made the new release packages for Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 20.10, and Ubuntu 21.04.
Due to compile issue, the package for Ubuntu 18.04 is stuck at v2.10.22 at the moment.
1.) Open terminal from system application launcher. When it opens, run command to add the PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/gimp
Type user password (no asterisk feedback) for sudo prompts and hit Enter to continue.
2.) If an old version of GIMP .deb package was installed, upgrade it via Software Updater (Update Manager) utility.
or run apt commands in terminal to install GIMP:
sudo apt install gimp
If you’re going to upgrade the image editor from command line, I’d recommend to RUN this command instead, so to also install the updated dependency libraries.
sudo apt upgrade
3.) (Optional) To restore GIMP to the stock version in main Ubuntu repository, run command to purge the PPA:
sudo apt install ppa-purge && sudo ppa-purge ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/gimp