Remove GIMP 2.10.18.1 and replace it with 2.8 on Linux Mint 20.1

[Ofnuts]

(02-12-2021, 11:22 AM)Scooby-2 Wrote: Thank you Ofnuts for your prompt and detailed reply.

Unfortunately I have many problems with GIMP 2.10. I only do very basic photo editing and I have never needed any additional functionality than that offered by 2.8.

Here are my issues with 2.10, in order of importance.

1. The coloring of the menus and tools in GIMP 2.10 has been removed. This is a dreadful backward step, worse for me as I am visually impaired.

2. The most recent issue I had was that the clone icon disappeared from the Tools menu. I then spent an entire afternoon (unsuccessfully) attempting to find out how to recover it, and realized that icons missing apparently is an  issue with version 2.10. I couldn't find anything that related exactly to my problem (it disappeared while I was using it and, as far as I know, it's the only one that's disappeared) but I eventually tried removing the program from the command line using 'sudo apt purge' and then reinstalled it, but this did not solve the problem.

3. It seems the developers of all software and operating systems want to push a "clean look" to everything upon us, and this comes at the cost of usability and, in some cases, even functionality. I recently upgraded another machine from Ubuntu 16.04 LTS to 20.04.2 and while it has a cleaner look, the buttons I was used to seeing in some programs have all been buried behind menu buttons, and worse still, some functionality has been removed. Great for a clean look, however reducing usability and functionality to this degree I would think drops the maximum target audience age to around 8 years! I couldn't believe what I saw in the supposedly improved version, apart from the fact that it was noticeably faster. This was the reason I dropped Ubuntu and moved to Mint (version 18 of which I had been running on this machine for some time). I am rambling, so back to the subject - this "we must have a clean look" mind set seems to have been applied to GIMP 2.10, and now we have to search in black and white icon groups (which, as I have said, are extremely difficult for me to distinguish) to look for the tools we want.

4. Did keyboard shortcuts work in 2.8? I don't know as I never used them, but "C" for the clone tool doesn't work in 2.10. It's as though the tool has been completely removed.

5. GIMP 2.8 has floating panes, which can be a pain (pun intended) at times but it allows me to clone from one image to another, and I can watch the cursor on the source image at the same time as the image I am pasting on to. In 2.10 They are locked and we have a new tab at the top left to switch between the images. This is useless for cloning from one to another.

By the way, the program (V2.10) on my other machine has not lost its Clone tool icon so I was able to complete my work on that.

1. There are themes to change Gimp appearance (Edit>Preferences>Interface>Theme and Edit>Preferences>Interface>Icon Theme
   
2. With all the new tools the toolbox is getting really busy, so they invented tool groups (notice the little triangle in the corners of some icons). This can be disabled (or you can make your own groups). See Edit>Preferences>Toolbox>Use tool groups.
   
3. Matter of taste. The Gimp GUI is highly customizable, the devs do look at the comments for the large community of users for a default setup, you can always make you own if you disagree (seee below).
   
4. The Clone tool is still there, and it still has an icon in the toolbox (if enabled and not hidden in a group) and its shortcut is still 'C' (otherwise see Edit>Keyboard shortcuts and search "Clone") (and if all else fails you can always use the menu Tools>Paint tools>Clone to reach it)
   
5. Windows>Single-window mode and reset it.
   

Screenshot of my 2.10 toolbox (the little triangles in the bottom right corner of icons indicate there is a group):