As you know, GIMP (Gnu Image Manipulation Program) is a free and powerful raster image editor. Last week was the release of the stable 2.6 version. Among the improvements are windows centralisation (there’s only one window now, finally), and GEGL support.

I’ll explain the simplest way to install it on Ubuntu Hardy Heron. Follow these steps:

1. Add the unofficial getdeb repository into your /etc/apt/sources.list. Do:

$sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list (or instead of gedit you can use your favorite text editor, eg. nano, kwrite, kate, vim, emacs)

Now paste these two lines at the end of the opened file:

# Unofficial Getdeb repositories:

deb http://ubuntu.org.ua/ getdeb/

Save the document, and close it.

Now update with the command: $sudo apt-get update

2. Remove your current Gimp instalation, with the command:

$sudo apt-get purge gimp

3. (optional) Check which version of gimp is the first candidate for instalation:

$apt-cache policy gimp

4. If you see the version 2.6 of gimp present, install GIMP:

$sudo apt-get install gimp

Press “y”, and wait some time, for the instalation to finish.

5. Now, when you have GIMP installed, you should comment the getdeb repository in your /etc/apt/sources.list . Again do:

$sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

and put a “#” at the beginning of the line “deb http://ubuntu.org.ua/ getdeb/” (that you inserted in the first step).

6. Enjoy yourself.

Gimp 2.6 screenshot on my machine