Picasa – Google Releases its Graphics suite for Linux

Posted by E@zyVG | Filed under Geeky, Software

Google took sometime to release it’s open source graphics application for Linux platform, as the same was available for Windows for quite a long time. I even made a post once, mentioning how come Google being an open source company, at least the products that are freely available to download, have versions for Windows, but not for Linux. Today that came true, at least with Picasa. I did download it on Windows, and the application just stunned me. With beautiful and elegant interface and powerful tools, that can rival some of the commercial applications, such as ones from Adobe and Microsoft, and all that for free. There are already excellent applications on Linux, the two most famous ones are DigiKam and F-Spot, which do nealry the same what Picasa graphics suite is meant for.

Picasa runs on top of GPLed Wine software, meaning it includes a runtime version of CodeWeavers’s modified Wine (if I am not mistaken). That doesn’t mean that you will need to download and install Wine, or purchase Crossover Office to use Picasa. Two features left out of the Linux version were CD-ROM burning and movie playback. Future versions should fix that.

I didn’t have time to check it out and to write a full review, so why don’t you download and try it out. I am sure that people will be impressed with what this software can do. Personally I will compare this application with my favourite DigiKam. What I’ll be looking at are the tools to manipulate images, the organizer and the speed of indexing. Google provides three ways to download and install the package: .rpm (Red Hat/Fedora/Suse/Mandriva x86), .deb (Debian/Ubuntu x86) and .bin (self-extracting installer, for any x86 Linux distribution).

According to some sources, another popular Google program should hit Linux and Mac OS X soon is the Google Talk client. Google Talk is based on XMPP and users can also chat with Jabber-compliant clients, such as GAIM, Trillian Pro and iChat .

Imagine Picasa with integrated Flickr – a killer app with one stop solution. I know, two competing companies – not possible!

BTW, Ravi has already written a nice review on this.

Comments (5) | May 27th, 2006

5 Responses to “Picasa – Google Releases its Graphics suite for Linux”

  1. Taoski Says:
    May 27, 2006 at 3:44 am

    I never got on with Picassa on the PC though.

    I now move to just using web based apps when ever possible and IMO, Flickr beats all!

  2. RyanC Says:
    May 27, 2006 at 4:34 am

    My only concern with web-based apps is that you, of course, need an Internet connection for them to work – not so useful if you’re somewhere without a connection :(

    Is Picasa available for Mac at all, it looks a bit like it could compete with iPhoto?

  3. greywulf Says:
    May 27, 2006 at 4:45 am

    I’ve got Picasa for Linux installed and I tested it pretty heavily yesterday. The good news is that you don’t need wine or CodeWeavers to run it – it’s completely self-contained and runs just like any other app. If you have got wine installed too, it doesn’t mess with those files either, which is nice.

    My first impression is that it’s fast – much faster than Picasa for Windows on the same computer booted back to XP, and it does everything, just the same. It’s memory usage is lower too, which is nice.

    I liked that it found all my photos, and handles RAW images exactly the same as jpg – there’s no conversion step involved. An image is just an image to Picasa.

    What I miss though is the ability to fine tune the tools. I’d like to control the sharpening, the noise, etc. Where sliders exist, they’re just not fine enough for me. And the photo correction/enhancement capabilities aren’t as complete as digiKam. That’s still me photo management tool of choice.

    That said, Picasa is an important milestone. It’s an app used by thousands of people worldwide under Windows. Having is also available, in full, for Linux means there’s one less reason for them to hold back from switching to Linux. Heck, the improved stability and speed alone is good enough reason :)

  4. AtariBoy Says:
    May 28, 2006 at 4:28 am

    I’ve tried picasa a couple of times.

    The interface is wonderful, if a little simple some times, I feel like I need a bit more control over some of the editing functions some times.

    The reason I stopped using it was because of the way it organized my photos, the file system which it saved the original and edited version was a little confusing, almost like it didn’t want you to touch “my pictures” which became annoying for me.

    Very nice tho, I often suggest it to people as a free photoshop elements.

  5. iiq374 Says:
    May 29, 2006 at 3:10 pm

    Picasa is one of my favorite tools – and I tend to recommend it to everyone who just likes to view and maybe crop their photos.

    If you are doing serious photo manipulation then its not appropriate – but for 80% of us rotating and cropping is really all we want to do anyway.

    Has good slideshow, and most importantly has good searching. Made even better if you actually add attributes to your photos while importing.

    Good to hear that good apps are still making themselves multi platform.

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