Release Roundup: MyPaint 2.0.0, Blender 2.82, cheat 3.6.0, Gammy 0.9.56 and Drawing 0.4.11
Quite a few free and open source applications have been updated over the weekend. I don't have time to post articles about all of them separately, so this article covers (in short summary) the new releases of MyPaint 2.0.0, Blender 2.82, cheat 3.6.0, Gammy 0.9.56 and Drawing 0.4.11.
3 years after the previous stable release, MyPaint 2.0.0 was released over the weekend with a new layer mode and a different composition method by default. Also, the application was ported to Python3, although it still works with Python2 too.
MyPaint is a free, open source drawing and painting program available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. The application features infinite canvas, configurable brushes, graphics tablet support, and a distraction-free fullscreen mode, on top of a simple GTK+ 3 interface. It uses Open Raster as its default file format, but it also supports saving images to PNG or JPEG.
Important changes in MyPaint 2.0.0 include:
The pigment / paint mode is now default for all brushes and new layers. In case some don't like this, or it's too slow, set the Pigment slider off from the Tools Options Panel (can be enabled from the Edit menu), and change the layer mode to Normal.
"Paint Mode" is a spectral upsampled 30 channel weighted geometric mean compositing mode that emulates the appearance of paint and pigments, as seen in the MyPaint screenshot above.
For the next release, the developers are focused on fixing the use of deprecated interfaces, as well as user interface and performance improvements, along with some new features.
The second update of the Blender 2.80 stable branch was released with over a thousand fixes, as well as some other important updates.
Blender is a free and open-source 3D computer graphics software toolset used for creating animated films, visual effects, art, 3D printed models, motion graphics, interactive 3D applications, and computer games. It's available for Linux, *BSD, macOS and Windows.
For the 2.80 release, the integrated game engine for making and prototyping games was removed, with the recommendation being to use more powerful open source game engines like Godot.
Important changes in Blender 2.82 include:
This page explains the changes in more detail. There's a video too showcasing the Blender 2.82 features:
cheat is a command line tool to view and create cheatsheets on the command line, "designed to help remind *nix system administrators of options for commands that they use frequently, but not frequently enough to remember". It's available for Linux, Windows and macOS.
Use cheat with your own cheatsheets, and/or using the community cheatsheets, and get instant examples from the command line, like:
The latest cheat 3.6.0 adds only one but important change: it significantly improves the search functionality. Recently the tool was updated with an improved Bash completion script, along with an improved fzf integration. Automatic config file generation was also added not long ago.
To use cheat, install the binary downloaded from the GitHub releases page somewhere in your PATH (e.g.
A similar tool which only uses online cheatsheets (so you can't save your own custom cheatsheets), which doesn't require installing anything to use it but cURL, is cheat.sh
Gammy is a Qt5 adaptive screen brightness GUI that was recently ported to Linux with X11 (it was originally only available for Windows). The application takes screenshots of your screen periodically, then adjusts the pixel brightness based on the contents of these screenshots.
The tool allows configuring the minimum and maximum screen brightness, offset, adaptation speed, threshold, screenshot rate, and color temperature.
Changes in Gammy 0.9.56 include:
There are no Gammy binaries for download so you'll need to build it from source.
For a bit more on Gammy, see: Gammy: Adaptive Screen Brightness Tool For Linux
Drawing is a basic image editor designed to be simple to use (similar to Microsoft Paint), for the GNOME desktop.
It supports PNG, JPEG and BMP image files, and it includes classic tools like pencil, eraser, highlighter, line, curve, shapes, color picker, and of course, the ability to insert text. You can also use it to crop, rotate, add filters, and more.
Drawing 0.4.11 changes:
Drawing is available on Flathub for easy installation across many Linux distributions, in a PPA for Ubuntu and Ubuntu-based Linux distributions (Linux Mint, Pop!_OS, Elementary OS, Zorin OS, etc.), and in the official repositories for Fedora, Arch Linux, Debian Unstable, Ubuntu 20.04 and more (though not yet updated to the latest version at the time I'm writing this article). All installation options are listed on the application homepage linked above.
MyPaint 2.0.0
3 years after the previous stable release, MyPaint 2.0.0 was released over the weekend with a new layer mode and a different composition method by default. Also, the application was ported to Python3, although it still works with Python2 too.
MyPaint is a free, open source drawing and painting program available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. The application features infinite canvas, configurable brushes, graphics tablet support, and a distraction-free fullscreen mode, on top of a simple GTK+ 3 interface. It uses Open Raster as its default file format, but it also supports saving images to PNG or JPEG.
Important changes in MyPaint 2.0.0 include:
- Linear compositing and spectral blending / mixing (pigment)
- Layer views: added controls for switching between different views of the documents, with the views describing which layers are visible together
- Brush strokes dependent on view rotation and view zoom
- Additional symmetry modes: vertical, vertical+horizontal, rotational, snowflake
- Expanded flood fill functionality: offset, feather, gap detection and more
- New brush settings: offsets, gridmap, additional smudge settings, posterize, pigment
- New brush inputs: barrel rotation, base radius, zoom level, gridmap x/y, direction 360, attack angle
- New Import Layers feature
- Zoom and view-rotation-dependent painting
- New symmetry modes (vertical, vert+horz, rotational, snowflake)
- Floodfill:
- Offset, feathering and gap detection added
- Source, blend mode and opacity added
- Erase / Lock Alpha / Colorize modes are now respected by Floodfill
- Python 3 support
- Added AppImage binaries
The pigment / paint mode is now default for all brushes and new layers. In case some don't like this, or it's too slow, set the Pigment slider off from the Tools Options Panel (can be enabled from the Edit menu), and change the layer mode to Normal.
"Paint Mode" is a spectral upsampled 30 channel weighted geometric mean compositing mode that emulates the appearance of paint and pigments, as seen in the MyPaint screenshot above.
For the next release, the developers are focused on fixing the use of deprecated interfaces, as well as user interface and performance improvements, along with some new features.
Blender 2.82
The second update of the Blender 2.80 stable branch was released with over a thousand fixes, as well as some other important updates.
Blender is a free and open-source 3D computer graphics software toolset used for creating animated films, visual effects, art, 3D printed models, motion graphics, interactive 3D applications, and computer games. It's available for Linux, *BSD, macOS and Windows.
For the 2.80 release, the integrated game engine for making and prototyping games was removed, with the recommendation being to use more powerful open source game engines like Godot.
Important changes in Blender 2.82 include:
- Blender’s simulations got a major bump with a brand new physically-based liquid/gas simulation system using Mantaflow and improvements in cloth physics
- New Mantaflow system allows you to create fire and smoke simulations
- New FLIP solver allows creating lifelike liquids
- Improved cloth simulations
- The popular tiled-based UV mapping system (UIDM) is now fully integrated in Blender’s pipeline
- Pixar USD (Universal Scene Description) export
- Faster rendering on Windows
- Cycles now supports the AI-Accelerated Denoiser from OptiX, for NVIDIA RTX graphics cards (with support for multiple GPUs)
- EEVEE: Many improvements such as better group node sockets, normal mapping for non-mesh objects, performance and quality of render passes
- Grease Pencil: Many changes in the user interface, dopesheet updates, new tools and modifiers.
- The user interface and user experience keeps getting polished in 2.82; with improvements to the tool system and layout tweaks for consistency
This page explains the changes in more detail. There's a video too showcasing the Blender 2.82 features:
cheat 3.6.0
cheat is a command line tool to view and create cheatsheets on the command line, "designed to help remind *nix system administrators of options for commands that they use frequently, but not frequently enough to remember". It's available for Linux, Windows and macOS.
Use cheat with your own cheatsheets, and/or using the community cheatsheets, and get instant examples from the command line, like:
$ cheat ip
# To display all interfaces with addresses:
ip addr
# To take down / up the wireless adapter:
ip link set dev wlan0 {up|down}
# To set a static IP and netmask:
ip addr add 192.168.1.100/32 dev eth0
# To remove a IP from an interface:
ip addr del 192.168.1.100/32 dev eth0
# To remove all IPs from an interface:
ip address flush dev eth0
# To display all routes:
ip route
# To display all routes for IPv6:
ip -6 route
# To add default route via gateway IP:
ip route add default via 192.168.1.1
# To add route via interface:
ip route add 192.168.0.0/24 dev eth0
# To change your mac address :
ip link set dev eth0 address aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff
# To view neighbors (using ARP and NDP):
ip neighbor showThe latest cheat 3.6.0 adds only one but important change: it significantly improves the search functionality. Recently the tool was updated with an improved Bash completion script, along with an improved fzf integration. Automatic config file generation was also added not long ago.
To use cheat, install the binary downloaded from the GitHub releases page somewhere in your PATH (e.g.
/usr/local/bin), then run cheat --init to create the initial configuration file. Edit ~/.config/cheat/conf.yml to add paths to your cheatsheets. You can grab the community cheatsheets from here.A similar tool which only uses online cheatsheets (so you can't save your own custom cheatsheets), which doesn't require installing anything to use it but cURL, is cheat.sh
Gammy 0.9.56
Gammy is a Qt5 adaptive screen brightness GUI that was recently ported to Linux with X11 (it was originally only available for Windows). The application takes screenshots of your screen periodically, then adjusts the pixel brightness based on the contents of these screenshots.
The tool allows configuring the minimum and maximum screen brightness, offset, adaptation speed, threshold, screenshot rate, and color temperature.
Changes in Gammy 0.9.56 include:
- Improved brightness and temperature interpolation, resulting in smoother transitions
- Improved adaptation behavior (work in progress)
- Adaptation speed slider now allows more granular settings
- Added adaptation speed setting for adaptive temperature (up to 60 min)
- Auto mode now unchecks automatically when pressing the sliders
- Redesigned settings window (work in progress)
- Window width can now be resized with no limits
There are no Gammy binaries for download so you'll need to build it from source.
For a bit more on Gammy, see: Gammy: Adaptive Screen Brightness Tool For Linux
Drawing 0.4.11
Drawing is a basic image editor designed to be simple to use (similar to Microsoft Paint), for the GNOME desktop.
It supports PNG, JPEG and BMP image files, and it includes classic tools like pencil, eraser, highlighter, line, curve, shapes, color picker, and of course, the ability to insert text. You can also use it to crop, rotate, add filters, and more.
Drawing 0.4.11 changes:
- Support color-picking with the alpha channel
- Add an "outline" option to the text tool
- Geometrically correct ellipses (circle tool)
- Rounded rectangle option (rectangle tool)
- Fix the sensitivity of the "delete" action during the selection editing
- Allow closing tabs with middle-click
- Rewrite preferences window to include help labels
- Transparency replacement options
Drawing is available on Flathub for easy installation across many Linux distributions, in a PPA for Ubuntu and Ubuntu-based Linux distributions (Linux Mint, Pop!_OS, Elementary OS, Zorin OS, etc.), and in the official repositories for Fedora, Arch Linux, Debian Unstable, Ubuntu 20.04 and more (though not yet updated to the latest version at the time I'm writing this article). All installation options are listed on the application homepage linked above.
