PIcasa on Linux, so far
May 26th, 2006 by Doc Searls
Last week in New York, I shared a cab with a friend who works for Google. He was the guy who, with permission from his company, gave me a scoop that had to stay embargoed until 8pm Pacific time tonight (Thursday, as I write this), while I was out having an anniversary dinner with my wife.
What the hell, scoops are over-rated anyway. News is news. In this case, news that Google has released Picasa, its photo editing and organizing software, on Linux. That's before they release it on Apple (if they ever do). I believe this is a first.
Picasa began as the product of a Pasadena, California company by the same name. That company was founded in October, 2001. Google bought the company in May, 2004.
Migration was done with Wine. (Details here.) While not every feature in the original Windows version is implemented, most are, and more are planned. Among the current features is the ability to detect and interact with an attached camera, which is a cool thing.
I recorded a long conversation earlier today with Chris DiBona, the open source program manager at Google. But it's late and I don't have time to go back over it right now. Suffice to say that Chris says Picasa on Linux is way cool. Judging from responses on Digg and other places, Chris isn't alone.
As of 11:50pm, less than four hours since the news hit, Google Blogsearch finds 2121 posts that mention Picasa and Linux. Technorati finds 1928. Those are just benchmarks. It'll be interesting to see how those numbers grow over the next several days.
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Doc Searls is Senior Editor of Linux Journal
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I don't think major distros
On June 20th, 2007 Mike (not verified) says:
I don't think major distros would ever bundle it. It could always be like, download and install from google website. Its (not free) closed source anyways. :|
Picasa is a clone of iPhoto
On September 16th, 2006 some guy (not verified) says:
That's before they release it on Apple...
why would they bother? Picasa is just the Windows version of iPhoto.
They wouldn't boyher
On November 5th, 2006 Bings (not verified) says:
They wouldn't boyher about it. About google workers, I'm constantly speaking to one of the spam dept gworkers. Recently, I found that google toolbar is planned to be install on 50% of computers worldwide. Is that Googlenet?
Picasa for Linox NOT 100% completed!
On June 10th, 2006 Alex 007 (not verified) says:
Hi Linox lovers!
Wait so long till I read that Goggle released a Picasa for Linox users, I use the Ubunto 6.06 LTS, & today found that when I use the same Picasa software for my earlier Win XP-pro, was possible to make "A Gift Cd"...now for the Linox; one this extremely feature for me is missing! WHY???
I do like Gooogle's
On November 15th, 2006 Jimmy (not verified) says:
I do like Gooogle's strategy during last few yrs. I think they've started their algorithm, they planned few yrs ago. And it works. I see different results with the same query on my business laptop, and home laptop. That means, for different users- personal SERP.
It uses Wine
On May 26th, 2006 Anonymous (not verified) says:
This is a cop out. Google has the power to bring a native Picasa to Linux. They should do so. There are other FOSS tools out there to cover this niche.
Using Wine might be a good thing.
On May 30th, 2006 alex polite (not verified) says:
I think that Google using Wine might actually be a better way to further Linux on the desktop then writing yet another FLOSS photo app. They probably shared some valuble insights with the Wine team.
alex
RE: Using Wine might be a good thing
On August 28th, 2006 Winston (not verified) says:
They probably shared some valuble insights with the Wine team.
That's right. If you follow the links in the article (http://code.google.com/wine.html), you'll see that in the process of getting Picasa 2.2 working on linux with Wine, Google got 225 patches committed to the Wine project. 225!! That also includes new features, not just bug fix patches.
Great effort, in wrong place
On October 22nd, 2006 What Is (not verified) says:
Great, so instead of investing effort in developing linux apps, they invested effort into getting other Windows apps working in Linux. I won't go into the wine-is-good vs wine-is-bad debate, but it would be nice to see the same effort being put to use developing native linux software.
Exactly! With all the
On May 27th, 2006 Paul Howard (not verified) says:
Exactly! With all the resources Google has behind it, why couldn't the create a native version?
It's all well and good explaining that is uses wine on their site, but why not explain why they chose to use wine and not write it for Linux from scratch?
I just want google to
On October 17th, 2007 kuyewang (not verified) says:
I just want google to develop a version for linux
I second that opinion.
On May 26th, 2006 Anonymous (not verified) says:
I second that opinion.
PIcasa on Linux, so far
On May 26th, 2006 Marc Nadeau (not verified) says:
And i third it whit a so what?!
I fourth that. You people
On June 2nd, 2006 Abbas K (not verified) says:
I fourth that. You people need to remember that Progress is Progress and progress was made in wine and linux as a whole. be happy. remember google is a for-profit company & look at all they are doing for the FOSS community (SoC etc).
picasa
On May 26th, 2006 Anonymous (not verified) says:
It installed flawlessly and right now is scanning my drive and getting all the pics on it. Color me impressed. :)
Integration w/ Flickr
On May 26th, 2006 flickerfly (not verified) says:
Until I hear that picasa supports flickr on Linux, I'll probably not even try it. f-spot serves me very well and I'm happy with how it integrates flickr, plus it is already in the Dapper repositories.
404
On May 26th, 2006 Stuart Langridge (not verified) says:
Hm. The link (http://picasa.google.com/linux/) is 404 for me.
me the same :(
On May 26th, 2006 Anonymous (not verified) says:
me the same :(
Working for me
On May 26th, 2006 Anonymous (not verified) says:
...and very cool! How long until the major distros just bundle this?
Its closed source..
On May 27th, 2006 remo (not verified) says:
I don't think major distros would ever bundle it. It could always be like, download and install from google website. Its (not free) closed source anyways. :|
It works nicely
On May 26th, 2006 Anonymous (not verified) says:
It worked fantasticly here. It recognized all the photos of my disks, and sorted it very well. Nice interface, very kind for the user, also the few effects that it has are good. The unique suggestion mine is to port the whole source code to be linux compilant.
Good work for Google team. Hope they do the same with Google Earth, it's a pain in the ass to emulate it with wine.
Best.
Recreate Picasa as a native Linux app
On December 9th, 2006 Ben (not verified) says:
I certainly agree that having Picasa available on my Linux machine is better than not having it, even if the implementation is buggy and does not support all the Windows version's features, but I think it would be much better if it were remade as a native Linux app. I suggest that the open source program DigiKam would make a great foundation on which to build the Linux version of Picasa. DigiKam is a good photo organizer and is much better than Picasa in some areas such as editing, resizing and adjusting pictures, but it falls short in the ease of organizing your photos. You can not drag and drop pictures within a folder to arrange them to your liking as you can in Picasa. Since Google was willing to work with the Wine group to get the current version working, perhaps they would consider doing the same with the autors of DigiKam. A partnership might well benefit both parties, and would certainly make for a lot of happy Linux users.
Well it's a nice step, but
On July 3rd, 2006 TheKing (not verified) says:
Well it's a nice step, but .. if Google would make it native it would have run on a lot of more platforms that i386..
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It would be a blast if it could run 64bit on my AMD64 Linux workstation!!
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So I appreciate this step but plz plz consider native code, first step would be open up the source code (don't know if Google did that already ..)
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