Paint.net 5.2 alpha now runs on Linux

3836293648

Yes! This is by far the number one program I've missed since I left Windows years ago. GIMP is so unfriendly, krita is for drawing, pinta is a very shallow clone that only just stopped crashing a few months ago. Paint.net is just better in every way.

newsre4der

Sounds good, but why a .Net app can't work with .NET 10? Does it use Windows-only features?

RunSet

Paint.net was originally MIT licensed but the author closed its source because people did not give him credit. Note: The MIT license does not require credit. https://blog.paint.net/2007/12/04/freeware-authors-beware-of... Paint.net likely still benefits from the announcement of "Open Source Alternative To Microsoft Paint" long after switching to a proprietary license, which I find more dubious than using MIT-licensed code without giving credit to the author. Also I rather doubt a "clean-room reverse-engineered rewrite of Direct2D" can be "written by our good friend Claude, without whom this would NOT have been possible"?

nashashmi

Paint.net used to be an open source collaboration project by Rick Brewster, a Microsoft Employee and the students at the University of Washington. Today it is a private closed source project accepting donations, and still headed by Rick Brewster.

yodon

This is via Wine, so presumably it should also run on Macs now. Paint.net is the only thing I miss from my days on Windows machines, so super excited about this!

judah

The full thread[0] about how it runs on Wine is quite interesting: > Direct2D has always been the biggest hurdle for Paint.NET on WINE, and it's clear that it will never be completed enough for Paint.NET's use. And I can't just "disable" the use of Direct2D. So, instead, Paint.NET now has an internal, from-scratch, clean-room reverse-engineered rewrite of Direct2D that it uses on WINE (triggered by using /wine). It lives in PaintDotNet.Windows.Direct2D1.Managed.dll. This was written by our good friend Claude, without whom this would NOT have been possible and would NEVER have happened. > Most of this code is, as they say, "vibe coded." By that I mean that it has not been thoroughly reviewed, it's more "trust me bro" style. I cannot possibly review 180,000 lines of code, it's just way way way too much. For reference, the rest of Paint.NET is about 700,000 lines of code and I've been working on it for over 20 years. I did thoroughly review any code that had to be changed or added elsewhere in the Paint.NET code base (refactoring and integration points, etc.). Over time I do hope that more of this code will be vetted by real humans and also by more advanced AI models. [0]: https://forums.paint.net/topic/134563-%F0%9F%8D%B7-extremely...

joshuaissac

I see they finally got the domain name paint.net. They used to be at getpaint.net, and the paint company that owned paint.net had a link saying something like 'if you are looking for the graphics software, go to getpaint.net'.

tech234a

Apparently the author got a surprising amount of backlash on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/rickbrew.bsky.social/post/3muiv4phe...

rietta

Hugged to death? website is not working for me from the xfinity network.

JamesCoyne

Unlikely to see wide distribution on Linux given the license

haunter

Here is the source code of the last open source (MIT) release from 2008 Wonder if it can be built for modern Linux https://web.archive.org/web/20080000000000*/http://www.dotpd...

thataccount

Wine is not the same as "runs on Linux". Able to be run on Linux with wine, sure.

anttiharju

paint.net is amazing for basic png editing, I've dreamed of this day. It'a the only thing I miss from Windows. I don't understand the slashback at all.

VCFundedGenYer

It is very buggy, was AI slop coded, and barely works. This is not a good release. Don't support poorly made software. Use Gimp, Pinta, or Krita on Linux.

xnx

I didn't realize Paint.net was closed-source now. What's the best alternative, Pinta?

redox99

How much in tokens/Claude subs would it cost to make a paint.net open source clone? Seems like the kind of software that with enough tokens an agent would be able to create from scratch autonomously (because you have a clear goal and reference) I'd guess with 5 max subs running fable 5.1 almost non stop it should be doable in a couple of weeks.

hulitu

> and EXTREMELY experimental support for running on WINE/Linux. So it needs Wine.

mythz

It's nice to have more options, so far I've managed to handle most of my Linux graphics needs with https://www.photopea.com - amazing broad support of document image formats, full-featured edits and all running in the browser.

tkot

I know nothing about writing an image editor or graphics programming but maybe someone here can fill me in - would it be more or less difficult ("would it take more or less tokens" is probably the right question to ask these days) to replace the Windows-specific APIs with cross-platform alternatives (I guess Skia instead of Direct2D and something like Avalonia or Uno instead of Win32-based UI?) instead of re-implementing Direct2D?

jijji

wow if the paint.net people are trying to win an award for most popup advertising on one web page, they have my vote!