GIMP (credit to mrAnmolv)

Linux loads the gtk libs when your desktop starts because it's a major component of gnu/gnome. Windows doesn't until you launch an app that would use it. It's not a small library.
- It's not a small library.
  it's featherweight compared to Windows Desktop, tho
  
  Sure... But the point is that it's an apples to oranges compare when half of gimp is loaded by the OS at boot under Linux and at runtime on Windows.
- Does Gimp load slowly for people who use KDE?
  
  I don't use KDE any more so I don't follow closely. But it used to be significantly slower. I recall some years back they were working to change KDE loading of gtk libs but I'm not sure what came out of that
  
  for me, it takes a few seconds on my decent spec laptop. (kde)
  
  Takes about a second for me.
- But GIMP uses GTK 2 (unless you're using the 3.0 beta), while GNOME and most other GTK-based DEs use GTK 3 (or maybe 4 now?), so the OS still has to load GTK 2 for GIMP on a cold run.
- So what if you used a distro completely gtk free?
  
  You need to have libgtk installed to run gimp. It would be like running a Qt app (what KDE environment and apps are based on, among other apps like OBS, roblox, google earth, virtual box, etc) without libQt. You couldn't because the dependencies aren't installed.
  Of course nothing is stopping you from running both, except maybe memory limitations on low ram hardware.
  Or you don't install it as you suggest and use alternative apps.

pro-tip you can run gimp on WSL2 and have its xwindow appear within windows just like a normal application. The ONLY way to run gimp on windows imo.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/tutorials/gui-apps
- How
  
  https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/tutorials/gui-apps
  
  Here is the WSLg repo if you're curious about how it works: https://github.com/microsoft/wslg
  Basically, Microsoft take a Wayland compositor (Weston) and modify it to add support to enable automatic RDP connection to the Windows host. They also added support to RDP individual application window instead of the full desktop. The result is the Wayland compositor will render the application windows over RDP when you run any GUI app.
  
  Ugly hacks MS made.

Everything loads slower on Windows. I've run programs through fucking Wine that still load faster than they do on Windows.

It's been a while since I've used GIMP, but I recall even loading it on Linux taking over a minute.
- Sometimes it does take a few seconds for me as well, but not even close to a full minute. That must’ve been on an HDD, right?
  
  It's never taken more than like 2 seconds to open on any of my computers
  
  It’s been a while, so it may have been on a HDD.
- Takes a while for me on Linux too. No idea if it's longer on Windows
- Opened it just now on Fedora. It took less than 2 seconds.
  
  It’s been years since I’ve used GIMP. It may have been on a HDD, but I can’t remember.

Wait, so are people going to claim that the start-up speed is the problem with GIMP on Windows and not the god awful UI? This is the problem with the Linux crowd. You guys write software to write software and not because you are a user of that software. A clunky UI - which is far, far too common on open source applications - will cost someone a heck of a lot more than a few seconds in getting work done.
- There's alot of irritation and bad general assumptions here lol. Krita, vlc, firefox, kdenlive etc exist and are amazing.
  Gimp's ui is pretty bad though imo, even if it's good enough. I'd pirate and use photoshop as it is now if I could.
- Is it a bad UI? Or is it a case of "I know where this thing is in Photoshop. Why isn't it in the same place in GIMP?"
  
  It's a god awful UI. Throw Blender into that mix as well.
  
  It's an awful UI. Last time I tried to use it, it took a while to find where the layers menu was. I don't think I found how to make a brightness / contrast layer before I gave up and booted back to Windows and Photoshop.
- wait people are supposed to use GIMP I think it was for that special level of hell for graphic designers
  
  Apparently it depends on who you ask in here.... some think that people should just use it and be grateful for having it because it's free! Others claim that it was never aimed at being a useful tool - mission accomplished, I guess! Congrats? Others think it's a perfectly fine piece of software because they've never edited photos for a living or done any graphic design work but it checks off feature boxes, so it must be good.
  This is all so indicative of the whole open source software community. Arrogant developers who think that just because they wrote a piece of code, the public should lavish them with praise regardless of how useless that software should be. I did a thing, so honor me!1!!
- I tried to use GIMP when my PS sub ran out and I NEEDED to get some pics edited. Good GOD it took me way too long to get used to the workspace. Workflow was cut ion half, I guess that's a thing with any new program but it took me like maybe a minute to figure out Darktable when I switched from LR.
  
  I totally hear you. This is what far too many of these open source projects don't get. Software needs to be usable. Fast code means squat if you are a user and you are pulling your hair out because the software forces you to work a way that is not intuitive.
- Yes, it's a common complaint that it doesn't use GTK 4 yet, it's still on GTK 2.
- What fixes would you apply to GIMP's UI to make it better and more convenient to use?
  
  Follow industry "standards" that have existed for literally 3 decades.
  And yes, when a piece of software dominates it's particular industry as much as Photoshop does, it is considered a standard.
  And to be clear, GIMP is just one of many such pieces of software that quite frankly are awful from a users perspective. Some will claim that "oh well it's simply because it's new software" but it's far, far more than that and it shows a complete disconnect between those who write the software and those who use the software.
  I find it curious that a way better alternative to GIMP is the browser-based Photopea which is partially open source. It doesn't have the speed for heavy work because it runs in your browser, but because it mirrora Photoshop, it's workflow is far more natural to someone who edits photos for a living. Doing a quick search it looks like a single person worked on Photopea, while almost 100 people over many more years have been working on GIMP. One is typical open source software - a bunch of people trying to learn a bit of programming, trying to flex their skills but clearly not actual graphic artist.
- This is the problem with the Linux crowd. You guys write software to write software and not because you are a user of that software.
  It's a problem you have since your OS pretends that Software (or a Computer in general) isn't complex.
  Linux crowds use *NIX principles that are >50 years old and didn't change a lot, because they work. Not because some software devs circlejerk or want to annoy you.
  
  This is the most Linux-ist answer ever.
  I'm talking from a users perspective. I don't give a flying fuck about whatever development technologies you are taking about because ultimately I don't care. The vast majority of people don't know - or care - how their car works. They just know it has to start. That's how you folks lose the battle. You wrote code because you want to practice your skills or learn some new techniques or just because your bored. That's great. That's fine. But you're not asking people that USE that software HOW it's used. Next to zero effort is put into workflow. Your code might be fast. It might be bug free. Congrats, but if it takes 10 clicks to accomplish something that other software can do in 2, then that's a problem. If the workflow is totally disjointed and not how a graphic designer actually works, then what good is that 2.735% more efficient code going to do for them?
  The fact that my post was about UI and workflow and youre talking about Unix principlea speaks volumes to why open source software tends to be so bad from a users perspective.
  
  The Unix principles generally don't translate well to interactive graphical interfaces.
- A clunky UI - which is far, far too common on open source applications
  So, what are you going to do about it ? Contribute ? Learn the ins and outs of gimp, and propose some UI changes ? And if you don't have time to do that, who does / who cares enough for that ? People who code stuff like GIMP generally don't really care for UI, or have the time. They're volunteers, passionate people. Not designers.
  That's also a broad generlization. Firefox has bad UI/UX ? (Sometimes yeah on some niche things but I wholeheartedly believe google is at fault somehow) What about Krita ? Blender has been doing UI work last I heard of it, so that's also that. Paint.net was also open source. Chromium has bad UI ? Android ? Vs Code ? GNOME ? KDE ? Element ? Jitsi ? Signal ? Wordpress ?
  Yeah, gimp sucks. And the type of people who are "linux elitists", that tell you you suck for not enjoying bad UI, also suck. But why not make a meaningful change to the world ? Try to hope for a world where GIMP is actually usable ?
  
  If all you want to do it text your programming muscles, then do so. But don't claim you've developing a useable piece of software. I mentioned this to someone already... A far better alternative is Photopea. It's browser based and is partially open source. While GIMP has almost 100 people tied to the project, Photopea was written by ONE guy. And it's great. Again, within the limitations of what browser-based software can offer. But it mirrors Photoshop as closely as possible and is a joy to use as long as the project doesn't get too heavy (because again, it runs in your browser). So since clearly GIMP wasn't written by people who give a shit about the end product as a real usable tool, then maybe the Linux community should stop proclaiming that it's a real usable tool whenever someone asks "ok, but what kind of software can I use on it?".

What specs do you have that makes GIMP load in 2 milliseconds?
- Obviously it's an exaggeration, takes about 2 seconds for me
  
  Just tested it, something between 1 and 2 seconds for me.
- I just switched to linux it is incomparably faster. I just deleted the built in paint program because it is useless, way easier to just load gimp in 1 second. Libreoffice is also faster, although not that much faster.
  
  Libreoffice is heavy, still loads much faster than MS Office tho
- He is using arch
  
  Btw

krita 😊
- Krita is fantastic
  Kde never misses

Everything seems to be way faster on Linux than on windows for some reason.
On one occasion I tested a build that took ~10 min on windows, in a Linux VM installed on the same machine, it finished in ~1min.
I have searched around for an answer for quite some time now, I could not find any definitive reason. Some say that process creation is slower on windows, some say IO is inefficient. Still struggling to explain 10x increase in throughput.
Here is a funny instance: https://emacs.stackexchange.com/questions/17783/why-does-emacs-take-longer-to-start-on-windows-than-on-linux
- IMO it's because Windows is targeted for general use so they don't bother optimizing anything. They'll just convince people that thei have aging hardware when things become slow and say stuffs like "unused RAM is wasted RAM" to justify taking up half of my memory on idle.
  Even running Linux from a USB is still a way smoother experience than running Windows for me.
  
  Windows is so not optimised (unoptimized?) that I cannot even see what is slow anymore. Doesn't look like windows is targeted for anything in this state.
- I thinks it caused by two reasons:
  process creation has much higher overhead on windows. On top of that, the antivirus system adds additional overhead not present in Linux because it scan every process on launch and monitor its behavior until the process finished. This result in any workflow that relies on launching a bunch of processes (e.g. make-style compilation which launch the compiler process recursively) to be very slow on Windows.
  file access on windows is also significantly slower on windows due to its filesystem filter. Also, antivirus typically hook into this filter and inspect every opened files. You can imagine this would result in significant slowdown for any workflow that relies on opening a lot of small files (e.g. compilation)
  If you disable the antivirus (including windows defender) performance would definitely improve, but it'll still slower than on Linux.
  In order to gain sufficient performance in windows, you'll have to use threads instead of processes (basically a single program doing everything instead of chaining multiple program Unix-style) and put your data in a single file so it can load all at once instead of in a bunch of small files loaded recursively. Basically a complete opposite of what people do on Linux.
  
  Thanks for information.
  Some day I might try to controllaby worsen process creation and file access of Linux to match windows performance. Not today though.
- for some reason.
  bloat
  I ran Atlus for a second before installing PopOS and Windows can be just as fast if you remove literally everything
  Atlus suffers from the fact that it's still just windows though so all the underlying issues are still there.
- Well, in case of Gimp for Windows, it also doesn’t help that it uses a modified GTK. So, when you start on Gimp on Windows, the program must load all the GTK libraries first, while on Linux the shared libraries are already loaded.

Stop lyin.... oh.
https://imgur.com/a/BWRJ2Ep

Am I going crazy or something? Gimp loads in under 5 seconds on windows for me, and that's with an absurd amount of crap (unity, blender, a vm, and 400+ browser tabs across 5 browsers) running in the background.
- Gimp loads in 500ms for me, on linux running on a mid-range SSD-using laptop.
- Sounds like you just have a God pc lol
  
  Meh? It's a "thin-and-light" gaming laptop, so it's quite decent, but idk if that counts as 'godly'.
- Windows cheats with scheduler. When foreground app uses a lot of CPU or IO, background apps basically stop running.

Me: Export this 256x256 PNG.
Gimp on windows: Bro, you'd better get a drink and a snack.
- I think you need a better PC my man. Takes me under a second for images upwards of 2000x2000.
  
  Yeah I think that's a bit dramatic, just because it's 3 clicks at most and a second to process.
  
  It's a beast, 3080, recent CPU. I can do the same thing in inkscape in a fraction of a second.
  I've been living in image software hell since fireworks disappeared. Why can't someone make vector and image manip together? Frustrating.

Nope this is truth. even with SSD on my part

still faster than Photoshop tho, but most of the time I use MS Paint 3D anyway

Credit to mrAnmolv

Is the font system at it again?

Kind of funny because I was using an old laptop earlier to recover a partition that Mac fucked up.
Instead of clicking GParted, I accidentally clicked GIMP. For a Core2Duo computer with 4GB RAM, 2 seconds wasn't an exaggeration.
Distro was Manjaro.

I read forever ago that deleting plugins and brushes you don't use helps slightly. Can anyone confirm/deny?

Anyway to make it open faster on Mac?
- Yes, make you GIMP open fast on Mac only for 999.99$/mo

Green Is My Pepper

Same with emacs

"That's the power of Fatdog64!"
Actually it seems like even on an SSD GIMP takes a few seconds to load nowadays on Windows and yet Fatdog64 loads it within a second or two. Anyone else tried Fatdog64 or any Puppy Linux OS?
- Hold up, Fatdog64 is an actual thing??

In my case Alacritty on Windows 10 takes like 30 seconds to open + 15 seconds waiting for Powershell, on Linux Mint Alacritty + Fish shell takes only 1-2 seconds to open
- On Windows for me it takes a solid 5 seconds, on Linux it's barely a second.
  
  photoshop takes about two mins on windows and i have a year old dell xps 15 maxed on ram and an i9

Just measured startup time on Windows. 37 seconds from click to splash screen, 40 seconds from splash screen to UI

We need to fund this study

Unless flat/snap
- Flatpak has performance similar to native. Snap is the slow one.

I just pirate Photoshop, it's so much better than GIMP.
- free software or bust
  
  Pinta is a paint .net clone:
  https://www.pinta-project.com/
- PaintDotNet is pretty worthwhile if your on the Windows
- I can afford the software, so I pay, but agreed GIMP is not even in the same galaxy as Photoshop.
  
  Nah gimp's functionality is pretty great. It's the ui that's holding it back right now; it's not intuitive enough at all.
  Honestly, I prefer krita over it for light work, even though it's more similar to clip studio than photoshop. Krita's amazing.