Graphics

Simple Photo Editing, Linux Edition!

Shawn Powers — Thu, 12 Nov 2015 18:51:49 +0000

A while back I wrote about the awesome open-source image editing program Paint.NET, which is available only for Windows. Although I'm thrilled there is an open-source option for Windows users, Paint.NET is one of those apps that is so cool, I wish it worked in Linux! Thankfully, there's another app in town with similar features, and it's cross-platform!

Pinta isn't exactly a Paint.NET clone, but it looks and functions very much like the Windows-only image editor. It has simple controls, but they're powerful enough to do most of the simple image editing you need to do on a day-to-day basis. Whether you want to apply artistic filters, autocorrect color levels or just crop a former friend out of a group photo, Pinta has you covered.

(Image from https://www.pinta-project.com)

There certainly are more robust image editing options available for Linux, but often programs like GIMP are overkill for simple editing. Pinta is designed with the less is more mentality. It's available for Linux, OS X, Windows and even BSD, so there's no reason to avoid trying Pinta today. Check it out at https://www.pinta-project.com.

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Designing with Linux

Joey Bernard — Thu, 22 Jan 2015 19:15:15 +0000

by Joey Bernard

3-D printers are becoming popular tools, dropping in price and becoming available to almost everyone. They can be used to build parts that you can use around the house, but more and more, they also are being used to create instruments for scientific work. Although a growing library of objects are available in several on-line databases, there is nearly an infinite number of possible things you might want to build. This means you likely will want to design and build your own creations.

In this article, I take a look at FreeCAD, an open-source parametric 3-D modeler (https://www.freecadweb.org). A parametric modeler builds the structures in the design based on a set of properties. Changing the design, thus, is simply a matter of changing the properties of said design.

FreeCAD can read and write several different file formats used in modelling and 3-D printing. It is built as a core application, with plugin modules made to handle specific jobs. Python is the language of choice, because there actually is a built-in Python engine. Additionally, FreeCAD itself can be imported into your own Python script. This gives you access to all of the geometric tools for use in your own code.

FreeCAD already should be in your distribution's package management system. In Debian-based ones, it is simply a matter of using the command:


sudo apt-get install freecad

In the latest version of Ubuntu, the latest version of FreeCAD actually is available. But, you always have the option of building FreeCAD from source, if you need some non-standard option.

To start it, you can just run freecad. It will pop open a window with a blank workspace in it (Figure 1).

Figure 1. On start up, FreeCAD gives you a blank workspace so you can begin working.

FreeCAD uses a workbench concept to give you groups of tools based on the task you are doing at any particular time. You can access the available workbenches by clicking on the View→Workbench menu item. Here, you will get a drop-down list of all of the available options.

As I'm focusing on the idea of building a 3-D object, let's start by activating the parts workbench. Clicking on the View→Workbench→Part menu item will rebuild the interface and introduce all sorts of new tools for you to use (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Selecting the parts workbench will change the interface, giving you access to all sorts of new tools to use for building.

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Linux Graphics News

Bryce Harrington — Sat, 26 Apr 2014 14:00:00 +0000

by Bryce Harrington

At the start of this quarter we looked at how 2013's graphics developments were more incremental than revolutionary, perhaps with the need for LTS stability in mind. Things are looking quite different this year, with several major changes quietly under way.

Last time, we identified XWayland's upstream status as a potential barometer of Wayland's desktop future. We'll look at what has recently landed and what's still to come.

X.org

The mesa project has made astounding progress in recent years, and this quarter saw the 10.0 milestone achieved. This release implements the OpenGL 3.3 API for Intel (support on other graphics chipsets will follow). This brings new texture, vertex, and shader APIs and several dozen bug fixes. A 10.1 release this past month added half a dozen more GL APIs and expands OpenGL 3.3 support to several late-model NVIDIA and Radeon cards. In addition the mesa project made bugfix releases on both the 9.2.x and 10.0.x series.

Meanwhile, the X11 project finally pushed out 1.15.0 after delaying it to include more new features. This release brings Direct Rendering Infrastructure 3 (DRI3) and the Present Extension, which we've discussed in earlier reports. A GLX rewrite is also included, which cleans out a major amount of redundant and unnecessary code. The project is also working on a bugfix release for the 1.14 tree which supplies a dozen XQuartz fixes, and has begun publishing pre-releases for the 1.16 series (see below).

The -ati driver's 7.3.0 release is of note due to how long it's been since the last release. Notable changes include enabling GLAMOR acceleration by default and supporting GLAMOR X-Video. Also is the usual improvements for supporting newer graphics cards, including tiling performance optimization for Southern Islands cards, preliminary support for Hawaii class cards, and PCI IDs for Berlin hardware.

Since the 1.15 release, xorg-server 1.16's development has focused on GLAMOR improvements by Intel (including porting a lot of their optimization techniques), a vast amount of warnings cleanup by Keith Packard (Intel), and the usual array of bug fixes and code cleanup. Other work not yet merged includes XWayland and XMir support code, which let Wayland and Mir run Xorg sessions; since many applications won't have been ported from X to Wayland or Mir, these X sessions offer a compatibility layer to allow gradual migration of the application infrastructure off X.

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Linux Graphics News

Bryce Harrington — Fri, 17 Jan 2014 18:52:00 +0000

by Bryce Harrington

Last October, our last look at graphics focused on the plans laid at September's X Developer's Conference. In the three months since then, these plans have come to fruition, reasserting the continuing relevance of X.org compared with Wayland and other compositing display servers.

Indeed, while Wayland continues to show solid progress in development, adoption by users and distros remains light, with efforts focused around niche areas (e.g. automotive). That said, this quarter saw interesting progress at increasing Wayland's flexibility, which may enable it to enter a wider array of niches and use cases.

X.org Stable Release News

The X.org project saw a prolific quarter, with several packages receiving some major new releases:

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GIMP Shmimp, Give Me a Browser

Shawn Powers — Fri, 13 Dec 2013 17:48:59 +0000

by Shawn Powers

Don't get me wrong, I love The GIMP. We all love The GIMP, as our Readers' Choice awards show this month. If I'm being completely honest, however, I rarely have the need for such a powerful application. Usually, regardless of what computer system I'm on, I pick Pixlr as my image editing program.

Pixlr is a Web-based image editing tool that rivals native applications in speed, and more important, in functionality. Powerful tools like "spot heal" that aren't found in most simple image editors are essential for folks like me who still get teenager-like pimples in their late 30s. It also integrates with on-line storage (Flickr, Picasa, Facebook) and allows simple uploads/downloads to your local computer. In fact, you have to look really hard in order to realize Pixlr isn't a native application.

Regardless of what operating system you're on, you can check out Pixlr right now by heading to https://pixlr.com/editor. It's not GIMP, but it certainly isn't gimpy either.

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Linux Graphics News

Bryce Harrington — Thu, 17 Oct 2013 21:48:38 +0000

by Bryce Harrington

X.org

The X.org Developer's Conference was held in Portland this September, providing a venue to discuss a range of topics relating to OpenGL, drivers, the X server, Wayland and Mir. Core X.org development has been in a bit of a lull, evidenced by the fact that there wasn't enough change to warrant a near-term 1.15 release of the server, but this is more than made up by increased progress made in Mesa at implementing OpenGL specifications.

Bug-fix point releases of numerous minor packages appeared this month. xorg-server 1.14.3 is probably the most interesting change here, as the 1.14 branch is being used in a number of Linux distros, and will be maintained as an important stable branch for some time to come. This release is mainly focused on backported input fixes by Peter Hutterer that makes touch support more usable, along with a few fixes for gpu screens and glx.

The xf86-video-intel releases are of note due to addition and then dropping of XMir patches from the driver, due to what the community perceives as a controversial management decision by Intel. Beyond that saw some work on the intel-virtual-output code, and continuing fixes to SNA (Sandybridge's New Acceleration) as they begin switching to SNA by default. UXA (Unified Acceleration Architecture) will remain available as an alternate AccelMethod settable via xorg.conf. SNA and UXA are 2D acceleration technologies unique to the -intel driver, in contrast to the EXA and older XAA technologies used in other open source drivers. Some distros, such as Arch and Ubuntu, already ship SNA enabled by default as it has proven to be faster than UXA and comparitively stable.

Chris Wilson posted his xf86VGAarbiter work to move VGA initialization from xf86 common code to the vgaHW module. VGA arbitration allows the X server to provide legacy VGA access via the kernel to multiple VGA devices.

At XDC was discussion about dropping support for XAA, and along with it XAA-only drivers. XAA (the XFree86 Acceleration Architecture) was introduced in 1996 and over the years many X drivers were introduced that use it; however these days it provides almost no speed advantage for modern graphics hardware and is largely superceded by EXA. Most of the widely used graphics drivers have converted to EXA (or UXA/SNA in the case of Intel), but some of the less actively maintained drivers have not evolved beyond XAA. This month Gaeton Nadon proposed patches to drop the -newport and -s3 drivers from the build. Other minor drivers like -sis and -ark received patches to fix up various ABI breakages and build issues. In the coming months we can expect seeing more of these minor drivers either be updated or dropped from X.org.

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Linux Graphics News - August 2013

Bryce Harrington — Wed, 11 Sep 2013 18:06:44 +0000

by Bryce Harrington

X.org

The X.org project is working towards the next major release, with August seeing mostly minor releases of various X components. Most notably of these were the mesa 9.2 release, new -intel and -ati driver releases, and a second pre-release of a new stable Xserver.

The Xserver release candidate 1.14.2.902 includes half a dozen small bug fixes on top of the earlier .901 release, in preparation for the 1.14.3 stable release.

The two -intel driver releases includes some Haswell performance tuning, RGB overlay support for Ironlake and later, and various other fixes. Most changes were to the SNA code path.

The -ati release is significant, as this is the first release in some time. This adds PCI IDs and support for a huge range of newer ATI hardware (Sea Islands, Southern Islands, Richland, and Kabini APU), reverse prime support, 2d tiling support and glamor 2d acceleration for radeonsi, and various fixes and enhancements.

The Mesa 9.2.0 release was announced Aug 27th as a development release. This will be followed by a 9.2.1 stable release in the coming weeks. The main new feature in mesa 9.2 is the OpenGL 3.1 API, which is partially implemented by several drivers.

Mesa 9.1.6 was a bug fix release which provides fixes to crashes, rendering corruption, etc.

Following these releases, Mesa development has focused on glsl, clover, geometry shader support for gen7 Intel, radeonsi cleanup, gallivm fixes, and other assorted code base cleanup.

Beyond Mesa and video drivers, the core X.org development these days is mostly maintenance, refactoring, and cleanup work. Adam Jackson put attention to cleaning up rootless code, various janitorial cleanups, and piglit test fixes. Eric Anholt put attention into Xephyr, migrating code to XCB and removing dead or obsolete code. Last month we looked at the ongoing new DRI3 work.

Wayland

The Wayland project comprises two code trees: 'wayland', which is just the protocol definition, and 'weston', the demo compositor that implements the backend server for the protocol.

Weston 1.2.1 was released on August 22nd this month, followed by 1.2.2 a week later to fix four serious regressions. Wayland 1.2.1 was released on August 22nd as well and is the current stable release; it provides cherry-picks of fixes since 1.2.0, documentation improvements, and addition of touch support to the move API.

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Linux Graphics News

Bryce Harrington — Tue, 13 Aug 2013 15:00:00 +0000

by Bryce Harrington

The graphics stack in Linux comprises a number of distinct projects, and in this article we'll take a look at the current development of X.org, Wayland, and Cairo.

Linux graphics have undergone a major evolution over the past decade in two respects. First has been a shift from 2D system rendering, to today's hardware-accelerated 3D system compositing. Second has been a large-scale migration of graphics support from X down to the kernel level, where it can take maximum advantage of hardware capabilities. In recent years the former has exposed limitations in X.org's design, while the latter made it much easier to reimplement a graphics stack separately from X.

Thus there is now both the motivation and means to replace X, and this has led to a couple efforts to do just that. Wayland is slowly but surely becoming a useful affair, and Canonical's Mir efforts are offering a credible new challenge. Yet recently X.org has embarked on development of DRI3, demonstrating that this venerable project is not yet ready to fade into the sunset.

Stable Releases

xorg-server: 1.14.2 was released June 25, 2013.
wayland 1.2.0 and weston 1.2.0 were released on July 12, 2013.
cairo: 1.12.14 was released Feb 10, 2013, and is currently preparing for a possibly upcoming 1.12.16 release.

X.org Development

By and large, X.org is in maintenance right now, although some interesting development work is going on around the edges.

Of particular note this month, Keith Packard has been developing Present, an X server extension that handles redirected video in composited scenarios more cleanly. It provides a more direct path for applications to display visuals on the screen. This complements recent development work for the new DRI3 extension. See below for a more detailed examination of this new technology.

A new library, libevdev, was introduced by Peter Hutterer, which wraps the kernel evdev interface and provides abstractions for ioctls, SYN_DROPPED events, and device bit checking. The goal of this work is to establish a shared codebase for use by X.org, weston, and evtest. libevdev has received two releases so far, and is currently at version 0.2.

Multi-screen reverse optimus support was added to the Nouveau and Radeon drivers. This feature allows rendering to be done by the integrated GPU (typically Intel), and displayed through monitors connected to discrete GPUs (e.g. Radeon or NVIDIA graphics cards).

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Non-Linux FOSS: Seashore

Shawn Powers — Fri, 10 May 2013 20:09:39 +0000

by Shawn Powers

As Linux users, we tend to take programs like GIMP for granted. Thankfully, as of version 2.8.2, GIMP is available as a native application for OS X! Because everyone reading this most likely is familiar with how awesome GIMP is for photo editing, it's worth mentioning there is another open-source photo-editing application for OS X named Seashore.

Seashore is an application written in the native OS X Cocoa language, so it clearly looks like a native application when running (Figure 1). Although OS X users no longer have to install X11 in order to take advantage of GIMP, Seashore is a powerful image editor in its own right, and because it's open source, it's well worth the effort to try it out! You can download Seashore at https://seashore.sourceforge.net. The native version of GIMP is available at https://www.gimp.org/downloads.

Figure 1. Based on the interface alone, it's obvious Seashore is a native OS X application.

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Gnuplot—the Grandfather of Graphing Utilities

Joey Bernard — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 18:48:51 +0000

by Joey Bernard

In these columns, I have covered several different scientific packages for doing calculations in many different areas of research. I also have looked at various packages that handle graphical representation of these calculations. But, one package that I've never looked at before is gnuplot (https://www.gnuplot.info). Gnuplot has been around since the mid-1980s, making it one of the oldest graphical plotting programs around. Because it has been around so long, it's been ported to most of the operating systems that you might conceivably use. This month, I take a look at the basics of gnuplot and show different ways to use it.

Gnuplot is a command-line-driven program. As such, it has been co-opted to provide graphic capabilities in several other applications, such as octave. Thus, you may have used gnuplot without even realizing you were doing so. You can use gnuplot in several ways. It not only can accept input data to plot, but it also can plot functions. Gnuplot can send its output either to the screen (in both a static file format display or an interactive display), or it can send output to any of a large number of file formats. Additionally, lots of functions are available to customize your plots, changing the labels and axes, among other things.

Let's start by installing gnuplot. Binaries are available for many different operating systems. Most Linux distributions also should come with a package for gnuplot, so installation should be a breeze. If you want the latest and greatest features available, you always can download the source code and build gnuplot from scratch.

Once gnuplot is installed, you can start it by executing the command gnuplot. When executed this way, you are launched into an interactive session. Let's start by trying to plot a basic function. You should be able to plot any mathematical function that would be accepted in C, FORTRAN or BASIC. These mathematical expressions can be built up from built-in functions like abs(x), cos(x) or Bessel. You can use integer, real and complex data types as arguments to these functions.

When using gnuplot to generate a plot, you either can have all of the commands in a single file and hand them in to gnuplot as a script, or you can start gnuplot up in interactive mode and issue these commands one at a time in the command environment. To run a gnuplot script, you simply need to add it at the end of the command when you run gnuplot—for example:


gnuplot script_to_run

When you run gnuplot in interactive mode, you can quit your session with the command quit. The two most basic commands are plot and splot. plot generates two-dimensional plots, and splot generates three-dimensional plots. To plot a simple function, you can use:

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