How to install GIMP on Debian 8.3

How to install GIMP on Debian 8.3

GIMP or GNU Image Manipulation Program is an open-source photo manipulation software, being a good alternative to Adobe Photoshop. It is used for image retouching and editing, free form drawing and converting to other image formats. This tutorail explains the installation process of GIMP on Debian.

Installation procedure

Before installing the GIMP, run the nano command to open the sources.list file.

root@linuxhelp:~# nano /etc/apt/sources.list

The sources.list file is opened. Now add these lines at end of the file. Save and exit from the file.

deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ stable main contrib non-free
deb http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian jessie main

Next execute the command to update the apt sources-list.

root@linuxhelp:~# apt-get update
Get:1 http://ftp.debian.org jessie-updates InRelease [145 kB]
Ign http://ftp.de.debian.org jessie InRelease          
Get:2 http://ftp.de.debian.org jessie Release.gpg [2,373 B]
Get:3 http://ftp.de.debian.org jessie Release [148 kB]                 
Get:4 http://ftp.de.debian.org jessie/main amd64 Packages [6,776 kB]
Ign http://ftp.debian.org stable InRelease                                        
Get:5 http://ftp.debian.org jessie-updates/main Sources [15.5 kB]
Get:6 http://ftp.debian.org jessie-updates/contrib Sources [32 B]         
Get:7 http://ftp.debian.org jessie-updates/main amd64 Packages/DiffIndex [7,900 B]
Get:8 http://ftp.debian.org jessie-updates/contrib amd64 Packages [32 B]
Get:9 http://ftp.debian.org jessie-updates/contrib Translation-en [14 B]
Get:10 http://ftp.debian.org jessie-updates/main Translation-en/DiffIndex [2,704 B]  
Get:11 http://ftp.debian.org stable Release.gpg [2,373 B]                 
Get:12 http://ftp.debian.org jessie-updates/main amd64 2017-03-14-2025.02.pdiff [526 B]
Get:13 http://ftp.debian.org jessie-updates/main amd64 2017-04-15-2027.16.pdiff [528 B]
Get:14 http://ftp.debian.org jessie-updates/main amd64 2017-04-15-2027.16.pdiff [528 B]
.
.
Fetched 23.4 MB in 4min 30s (86.8 kB/s)                                                          
Reading package lists... Done

Install the GIMP package by executing the apt-get install command and press enter to continue with the installation.

root@linuxhelp:~# apt-get install gimp
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree      
Reading state information... Done
Suggested packages:
  gimp-help-en gimp-help gimp-data-extras
The following packages will be upgraded:
  gimp
1 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 263 not upgraded.
Need to get 4,389 kB of archives.
After this operation, 75.8 kB disk space will be freed.
Get:1 http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ stable/main gimp amd64 2.8.14-1+deb8u1 [4,389 kB]
Fetched 4,389 kB in 32s (135 kB/s)                                                               
Reading changelogs... Done
(Reading database ... 136761 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../gimp_2.8.14-1+deb8u1_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking gimp (2.8.14-1+deb8u1) over (2.8.14-1+b1) ...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.7.0.2-5) ...
Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils (0.22-1) ...
Processing triggers for gnome-menus (3.13.3-6) ...
Processing triggers for mime-support (3.58) ...
Setting up gimp (2.8.14-1+deb8u1) ...

Once the package is installed click on the Activities window and type the GIMP package name in the search bar and run the application.

Wasn' t that an easy installation procedure? The GIMP provides extensibility through many programming languages like Python, Perl, etc.