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Hour 19
Getting Ready for an Art Adventure
Before you begin exploring The Gimp, you may want to sit down and decide how you
plan to use it. Do you want to create simple illustrations for use in a report or term
paper? Do you want to create images for your Web site? Do you just want to make your
photographs look better? Are you a starving artist in need of a high-end graphics application that will run on your low-end workstation?
Depending on your needs, take a look at how much computer power you will need in
order to run The Gimp efficiently. You can also use scanners, digital cameras, and graphics tablets in your quest for better art. But, before you hook up your scanner to your
Linux system, you need to check the hardware compatibility list and make sure you have
the additional drivers and software to make these peripherals work with The Gimp.
System Requirements
Since The Gimp can handle any graphics job (from creating a simple illustration to editing a high-resolution photo scan and handling pre-press production), it is important to
know just how much hardware is required so that you can use The Gimp to fit your
needs.
At a minimum, The Gimp will run on a 486-66/DX2 computer with 16MB RAM and a
40MB Linux swap partition. You will also need space on your hard drive to work with
image files. Ideally, you should keep a minimum of 200MB hard drive space available. A
computer with this configuration can produce simple illustrations and handle lowresolution (and small file size) photo images. But, be warned, The Gimp may perform
slowly in this environment.
Although The Gimp will run with an 8-bit (256 color) display, you may not
always like the results. The Gimp prefers a color depth of 16-bit or greater.
Like many software applications, if you want more performance, get more RAM. More
RAM also means larger swap space, which means that you can create larger images with
less drain on your system.
Web graphics work requires a beefier computer. A Pentium-133 with 32MB RAM and a
64MB swap partition will perform admirably. Most home users and many small businesses will find this setup adequate for creating greeting cards, brochures, and GIF and
JPEG images.