The State of the Arts - Linux Tools for the Graphic Artist

I can trace certain parts of my life back to certain events. I remember how getting fired from a dormitory cafeteria job forced me to focus more on completing my CS degree, which in turn led to working in high tech instead of food service. I can thank the short, fat, bald egomaniac in charge there for pushing my life in the right direction. I can also be thankful he doesn't read papers like this.

Like that fortuitous event, the first time I got my hands on a Macintosh and MacPaint - I don't even remember if that was the tools name - was when my love affair with computer art was formed. I'm not trained in art. In fact, I can't draw worth beans. But I can use computers. And computers open up my creativity in ways pen and paper never quite could.

Tracing the roots of my obsession of Linux graphics, I have to go back to working for Dell Computer around 1990. My boss at the time was a fellow named Jeremy Chatfield, now at Xi Graphics. Our stint at Dell was just north of Hell, minus the actual burning brimstone. Jeremy moved to Denver, invited me up to work for a short lived company doing SVR4 for PCs, and then into a new company formed by another of our cohorts at Dell - Thomas Roell. X Inside was my first real paid gig in the world of computer graphics, though compiling Motif for various flavors of PC Unix was hardly graphically compelling. But the foundation was laid. Eventually, Jeremy played one last roll of the dice that put me over the edge - he pointed me to a new tool, called the Gimp.

Since those early days in 1994-1995, I've been an avid Gimp user and at one point even contributed a small piece of code (though I think it has been rewritten so many times my electrons have long since vanished). Gimp opened up a world that I had only been interested in previously. It let me become a participant. I even got a chance to make my first (and only, to date) trip to a SIGGRAPH show. It all led to my writing the first draft of what was then the Linux Graphics mini-Howto.

Eventually, Marjorie Richardson at Linux Journal and I hooked up for an article on graphics tools for Linux, based on my mini-Howto. It was 1995 by then. I reviewed the state of tools - rather modest at the time. I've since moved the mini-Howto, and the Linux Gazette column which it spawned, into my own graphics Web site, The Graphics Muse.

After all these years of playing, I've finally moved out of software development and write full time. It's been some time since that first look at the state of tools for graphics on Linux, and the time is ripe for another, closer, look.

I won't delve too deeply into installation issues for any of these tools. The point here is to explain what the tool options are. Once a user decides to go with Linux, they'll need dig into specific tools documentation for help on installation.