The Underground Man

How to install GIMP for free with OS X (Panther)

I found very little about how to first find GIMP and then install it for Mac OS X. Thanks to a pointer from Joe Kissell's very useful 50 Fast Mac OS X Techniques I found the www.osxnu.org site with GIMP already packaged for OS X.

You can obtain it from a couple of unnamed sites but they (1) charge for it, and (2) are using older version of GIMP. I'm not sure what their value-add is (there must be one surely, or they would be violating the GPL license) but I'm not about to pay money to find out.

So on to the install info. At the end of this article is a link to a PDF of the instructions that you can download from my site.

1) First, obtain the GIMP package from osxgnu.org. I found it at:

http://www.osxgnu.org/software/Xwin/Applications/gimp/

It’s 121Mb, so make sure that you have a high-speed
connection to download it on.

2) Download and install the X11 package from the Apple Web site (I haven’t checked but it appears that it is already included in the Panther distribution on the 3rd CD):

http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/x11/download/

It’s 44Mb, so you’ll need a fast connection for this as well.

3) Install the Fink software package. I found it at:

http://fink.sourceforge.net/download/index.php

It’s 20Mb. This is necessary for the init.sh program (used in step 5 below) that launches Gimp (I imagine one could get it elsewhere with less effort, but Fink is useful for running other Linux apps as well as Gimp).

4) Install the GIMP package.

5) Launch X11 by double-clicking on the icon (find it in the Applications folder) and a terminal window (xterm) will appear on your desktop. In this window type:

% gimp

at the prompt. If gimp launches, congratulations are in order - you have the basics working.

The next step is to write a little Applescript that will launch it (and X11) for you and place it in the Dock.

5) Open the Script Editor (found in Applications->Applescript->Script Editor) and
enter:

tell application “X11”
activate
end tell
do shell script “export DISPLAY=.0 && source /sw/bin/init.sh && gimp”

I wish I could credit whomever wrote this script properly. I found it somewhere in the Internet cloud and saved it for when I got the Gimp working.

6) Select “Save As->Application” and put it somewhere you’ll be able to find it (I put mine in Applications).

7) I then found a GIMP icon on the Web (I got it from a little applet called Gimp Control) and replaced the Applescript icon with it. Gimp Control was created by Alex Niksay, and can be found at:

http://www.nicksay.com/alex/software/GimpControl/

It is intended for use with the Fink software package of Gimp, so I found it wasn’t as useful for me as it might have been, but it provided a nice Mac OS X icon.

8) Then I simply dragged the Gimp Applescript launcher to my dock, and voila! I can now launch Gimp and X11 by clicking on the icon in my Dock. Here is a clip of my desktop with the icons for X11 and the Gimp launcher added:

This document can be downloaded in PDF format here.

Posted by artandscience at January 14, 2004 08:31 PM