I’m using GIMP developement versions on my Windows 7 system and I’m happy about the progress. Now the “final dev version before version 3” has been released and suddenly the minimal system requirements were raised to “Windows 10 or more”!
WTF!?
Which OS functions of Windows 10 is needed to edit images!? Which new functions of an OS is needed ONE step ahead of a public release? Which special and new function of the OS “MS Windows” is needed while GIMP happily runs on virtually any Linux or iOS!?
Why are those “fancy new” features not optional and might result in disabled functions instead of blocking complete OSes, which ran rather smoothly prior to v2.99.18?
In the end it’s only about image manipulation, no cutting edge security tool!
I spent using developement versions of GIMP for many months now, trying to get out of the commercial world of Photoshop… and now, right in the final approach of a release, they cut people off… for what!?
We are NOT talking about the developement progress towards a huge new version with a new base, which needs Win 10+ up from the beginning. It is a sudden and sompletely unexpected change in the developement process.
Fine, no GIMP for me then.
I don’t switch to a SW, which needs to kiss Microsoft’s *rse for a “only runs of the newsest shiny Microsoft versions”-certificate.
Very dissapointing!
–Marcus
(going my living as a programmar for 20 years)
p.s. of course I’m going to ignore any upcoming “install new OS” or “we don’t care about lagging old men”-replies.
But you do yours and be online with what can only be described as a personal security disaster waiting to happen. I am sure MSYS2 and the GIMP community will gladly accept your 20 year experience in supporting outdated commercial operating systems.
We’ve had a few instances like this in the past - some change requiring API that was only available on more recent versions of Microsoft Windows, and some people made the effort to find alternative to keep supporting older Windows versions for a bit longer. Mind you, there probably wouldn’t have been many who could then have tried to reproduce issues only happening on these.
In this case, however, the change is a bit more severe, given that the build environment itself doesn’t seem to support older versions anymore.
It is possible that Marcus has insights into how it would be possible to build newer versions of GIMP with MSYS2 and still have them being compatible for Windows 7, and would also be willing to help with any issues that are specific to this platform - running it being a rather vital part for that in any case.
Given that you’ve already said you’ll ignore comments like mine, this may be a useless suggestion to you, but you should strongly consider upgrading to a newer, supported version of Windows or, better yet, a FOSS operating system if only for security’s sake. It would greatly benefit you in more ways than just being able to use the latest GIMP version.
@MaJuKL Hi! After talking with our main build contributor, he confirmed that GIMP should still run on Windows 7 (perhaps needing to install the Universal Runtime).
We don’t have any developers running Windows 7 however, so the minimum version we can support in terms of testing and bugfixes is Windows 10. Hope that helps! And yes, you’re welcome to contribute information or fixes to improve Windows 7 support.