@Tomedi :-
I did read somewhere about a method for using Paint.net directly under Linux using Mono, the open-source implementation of the .Net framework.....but I'm damned if I can find it ATM.
Graphic design is a long-standing hobby of mine. I switched to Linux full-time around 2014, and haven't looked back since. I'd already been using both the Photoshop CS2 suite (which I'd actually shelled out for back in the day) AND the Windows port of the GIMP under XP for some years before switching. Fortunately for me, CS2 is about the last version of PS that works more or less 100% under WINE.
I digress.
For more general messing around, I'd long been using a small Windows-only app called
PhotoScape, produced by a South Korean outfit called Mooi Tech. This will actually do everything you've mentioned, including the aspect ratio stuff.....but of course, being Windows-only, it requires WINE to run. Like you, I see WINE as a necessary evil - sometimes, there's no way around using it - but it's not something you really want permanently on your system IF you can avoid it....
A few years ago, some folks began producing WINE in AppImage format. If you don't know what these are, they're self-contained applications, including everything they need to run, and are completely distro-agnostic (at least, in theory). Anyways, I did some experimetation, and, well; let's just say.......a plan began to hatch.
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We'd been developing an eco-system of 'portable' applications for 'Puppy' Linux for at least 2-3 years at that point......essentially a Puppy version of the Windows PortableApps system. I did a lot of head-scratching, along with mucho experimentation, and eventually came up with a 'portable', self-contained version of PhotoScape, making use of the PortableApps build of PhotoScape and an up-to-date WINE AppImage, along with a handful of scripts to tie it all together. And you know what? It works.....
really well, too!
I set it up with a pair of scripts that would permit adding or removing a Menu entry, simultaneously 'linking' only those bits of WINE into the system that were actually required to run it for the duration of the session. You launch it from the Menu, it's essentially running FROM its self-contained directory.....which you can put anywhere you want. I run it from a flash-drive, as & when required.
I'd be happy to share it, except there's a caveat. As it is, it probably wouldn't run for you without some permissions adjustment, since 'Puppy' - unlike most Linux distros - is NOT multi-user; she's a single-user 'hobbyist' distro, and runs as 'root' all the time. That said, the concept SHOULD work; general research at one point early last year unearthed the fact that some Canonical devs had put together a PhotoScape Snap package for Ubuntu that works in EXACTLY THE SAME WAY, utilising a self-contained build of WINE.
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As it happens, my version was built around the same time as the Snap package.....yet I wasn't even aware of it until last year!
(
shrug...)
Get the latest version of PhotoScape for Linux - PhotoScape is a fun and easy photo editing software to fix and enhance photos.
snapcraft.io
The difference between theirs and mine is simple, however. Where the Snap package has to be installed, mine only ever 'links' into the system WHILE YOU'RE USING IT. And that's a huge, important difference.
(I'd gotten so handy with PhotoScape - which I'd been using since its early days (2007-8) - that I really wanted to be able to continue using it. Especially given that to obtain the same collection of functions under Linux, I found I had to use at least 3 or 4 apps at the same time. And that struck me as plain daft.)
Resource-wise, it took less to run PhotoScape under WINE than it did to have to run several Linux apps simultaneously. It might go against the grain for many Linux users, but it works for me.
Mike.
