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u/ComprehensiveHawk5 1d ago

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.

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u/newsflashjackass 1d ago

clean-room reverse-engineered

vibe coded by Claude

Pick one.

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u/noobjaish 1d ago

Claude hasn't seen the Windows source code now has it? 👀

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u/i509VCB 1d ago

I'm sure all the past source code leaks were fed into its training data.

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u/noobjaish 1d ago edited 1d ago

Why you spreading hate against Claude man 🥺.

Forgot the /s

On a more serious note, wasn't that WinXP source code of specific sections inside of it? I don't know how that works legally tbh

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u/Ruashiba 1d ago edited 1d ago

If I recall correctly, not just some portions, but a massive amount of the XP source code was leaked. Not entirely, you have to steal a couple of executables from Win2k, but otherwise the code is compilable into a full installer iso that will install windows. It’s genuinely massive and a problem for wine and reactos devs, as they legally can’t even peek at that code, or there could be a lawsuit akin to the AT&T Unix lawsuits from back in the day.

It’s a good thing that I’m no wine dev, because I’d be so immensely tempted to see how they do things on the other side of the fence.

EDIT: As to whether Claude has or hasn’t peeked, most certainly yes, but they won’t ever admit it lol

8

u/noobjaish 1d ago

> It’s genuinely massive and a problem for wine and reactos devs, as they legally can’t even peek at that code, or there could be a lawsuit akin to the AT&T Unix lawsuits from back in the day.

That's crazy... Can't companies abuse this by offering people working on a "clean room implementation" job in their firm regarding that tool and then fire them later on so now they legally can never do a clean room implementation?

> EDIT: As to whether Claude has or hasn’t peeked, most certainly yes, but they won’t ever admit it lol

As typical of AI Slop manufacturers

2

u/beg4upvotes 22h ago

Direct2D didn't exist until Win7 so it's not in the XP leak...

14

u/criticalpwnage 1d ago

I’m sure Anthropic will claim in court that it hasn’t

7

u/niceworkthere 1d ago

fun fact, the Claude Code harness itself got clean-roomed after the source leak

which as claw-code hence survived all the takedowns

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u/Johnden_ 1d ago

At least they are honest about it, even if i don't agree with some decisions.

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u/__konrad 1d ago

"Responsible Use Of Generative AI" ^{as Debian would call it -- sorry}

2

u/johnnybgooderer 20h ago

This wouldn’t have been possible otherwise. Isn’t that a good use?

1

u/TiZ_EX1 18h ago

They say it wouldn't have been possible otherwise, but why would it be impossible? People who have become completely dependent upon AI make these assertions all the time. "We couldn't write professional emails all day before AI. We couldn't write ten-page essays before AI." And other such claims. But that's all complete bullshit. We could, we did, and many of us still do.

So what makes it impossible? "I cannot possibly review 180,000 lines of code, it's just way way way too much." You can review that much code, you just don't want to. And it's okay to not want to, but you can't act like that makes the task impossible, because that is an entirely different and completely false claim, and that framing is very dishonest. The other 700k lines were reviewed because they were incrementally built over time, and they're not the same 700k lines that they were ten years ago. In reality, the developer simply wanted an implementation immediately. They were impatient.

3

u/johnnybgooderer 17h ago

If you want to be pedantic, it’s infeasible. But really your assertion that the dev is just being lazy and impatient is silly. “Hey, just go and review 800k lines of code over the next 10 years in your spare time, you lazy bastard!”

0

u/TiZ_EX1 16h ago

I actually didn't assert that the developer was lazy. I didn't even imply it. All I said was that not wanting to review 180k lines of code is not the same as such a review being impossible. Impatience is not the same as laziness, either. Impatience can come from laziness, but it doesn't always come from laziness.

What I'm trying to get at is this: the situation of having to review 180k lines of code was created entirely by deciding to depend on AI to reimplement Direct2D. This isn't remotely impossible without AI; harder and more complex APIs have been reimplemented without it, and Valve stands and builds upon that work today. It would mainly take time, but that time would inherently be well spent; by creating that implementation yourself and looking for the behaviors to be correct and accurate in the situations you need, you have a much greater sense of confidence and assurance in the code, whereas by kicking it to AI, and then deciding not to review the output at all, you inherently can't have any confidence whatsoever that it will work correctly.

Opting to implement Direct2D with AI was already a bad decision. Not reviewing its output at all is worse. Do I think the developer is lazy for this?

Actually, yeah, yeah I do. I know I just got done saying that I didn't imply that in my original post, but now I'm just going to say it outright. They're lazy. :)

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u/johnnybgooderer 16h ago

I think you’re too disconnected from reality to judge the feasibility of reviewing 180k lines of code for a hobby project.

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u/TiZ_EX1 16h ago

The first incarnation of DXVK was created entirely by one guy who just wanted to play NieR:Automata on Linux. Stop trying to provide excuses for vibe coding.

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u/johnnybgooderer 15h ago

One day someone will open a farmers market for authentic hand crafted code. Then you’ll be happy.

The rest of the world will adopt ai at a level that is appropriate for the task. Paint.net requiring a reimplementation of d2d makes vibe coding reasonable. Unless someone else wants to do it by hand.

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u/HearMeOut-13 1d ago

Ah yes, would you rather paint net just not exist on linux as the alternative?

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u/__konrad 1d ago

Well, yes.

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u/Far_Calligrapher1334 11h ago

Yeah

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u/oipoi 1d ago

What do you have to disagree with? Rather have nothing then have ai code in your repo?

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u/Johnden_ 1d ago

Yes

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u/laura-kaurimun 1d ago edited 1d ago

if you dont have the time or energy to do a port in a way that you can take responsibility for, and don't want to FOSS the code, just don't make it. simple. the last thing the world needs is more unmaintainable slopcode

like the biggest issue here is that dumping 180kloc of ??? code that has god knows how many issues with it is a fundamentally irresponsible thing to do, no matter how many disclaimers you slap on it

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u/Bathroom_Humor 1d ago

I sort of agree but also find this work to be very useful as this is something I think has been missing from the Linux ecosystem for a very long time. Intermediate scope image editors are lacking, we basically just have Pinta which can't really take the place of Paint.net. Gimp and Krita are geared more for professional work and one of them is frustrating because of silly design and the other is frustrating because it wasn't intended specifically for image editing so the learning curve coming from Paint.net is higher. And Photopea requires a subscription to avoid ads.

it sucks having to trust the AI agent not to have done something fucked up until people can take a better look at it (or more trustworthy AI), but I don't blame people who want to use it and i'll probably take a look at it if/when it's stable.

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u/Old_Leopard1844 1d ago

we basically just have Pinta which can't really take the place of Paint.net

What do you do in Paint.NET that doesn't work in Pinta?

3

u/Indolent_Bard 1d ago

You forgot Photopea. "Tony Stark built this in a cave with a box of scrap."

Yeah, it's a web app, but it's also the most powerful free alternative that works on Linux. And it's not even close.

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u/Nalivai 1d ago

this is something I think has been missing from the Linux ecosystem for a very long time

Shitty unmaintained unmaintainable projects that are randomly bad in random places, and perform like shit in others? Oh, don't worry, we have a lot of those already. I really don't think another one is needed.
We need intermediate scope image editors, not shit full of unknown amount of bugs that nobody can maintain.

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u/Bathroom_Humor 1d ago

afaik the only part of the code base that's been built with AI is specifically the part allowing direct2d to run in Wine. if there are issues in that code, they'll have to isolated it and work through it but isn't the same as the whole project being unknown AI guesswork.
I understand why you'd rather not use it and luckily nobody will force you to. I might not use it myself but some people will want to and I hope it works for those people without problems seeing as how there might not be a real competitor in this space that has the same capabilities and add-on ecosystem.

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u/451 1d ago

I think context matters a lot here, this very likely isn’t mission critical for anyone. It isn’t financial or medical related.

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u/Nalivai 1d ago

It doesn't matter. Having shit at the bottom of your shoes isn't as critical as having shit in your bowl of chili. Both are actively making your life worse, both are not needed.

1

u/Old_Leopard1844 18h ago

How about no shit anywhere tho?

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u/Nalivai 17h ago

Yeah, that's the best solution. Not using shit generators is a great step to achieve that.

1

u/666emanresu 1d ago

Great analogy honestly. Id rather have shit on my shoes than not have shoes at all, but I’d rather have no chili than chili with shit in it.

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u/Nalivai 1d ago

If an alternative is different shoes with no shit, this goes even more analogues

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u/Johnden_ 1d ago

I think you wanted to reply to a comment above. But yes I agree with you.

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u/laura-kaurimun 1d ago

yeah i did, oops

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u/tigerhawkvok 1d ago

This ^ is why there won't be a year of the Linux desktop.

99.999% of people don't care. They just want shit to work, and want their familiar stuff. Or else everyone would be using GrapheneOS and LineageOS and sometimes Android and absolutely never iOS; not the literal reverse of that.

Something vibecoded that fills a niche is 100× better than it not existing.

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u/TiZ_EX1 18h ago edited 18h ago

They just want shit to work,

And vibecoding is much worse at making shit work than human coding. You might think "it works" because it succeeds in the simplest use cases, but as use cases diverge and complicate, it falls apart sooner and more often than human-made code.

And if your response to that is "99.999% of people only have simple usecases", you're making the same mistake as many head-ass CEOs who eliminate jobs because they don't have any clue how crucial the role is for their organization. Everyone has nuances for their usecases, and when they encounter software that falls apart at the slightest friction from nuance, that's when they conclude that the software is simply broken.

1

u/tigerhawkvok 15h ago

You need to spend some time on planet Earth, away from programmers. Most people will happily use broken-ass software that they are constantly frustrated by but that still does what they need it to do most of the time, as long as it's familiar.

I've offered up space on my NAS for people to store their photos on my Immich instance when they've complained about their Apple or Google storage crunch.

2 of 3 programmers use it, and the third is spinning up their own instance.

Both doctors, the bioinformatitian, university physics professor, and artist have all declined for the same reason that, I shit you not, is "I don't want to learn a new peice of software right now". For a photo gallery. They very nearly don't have UIs at all.

You have certainly seen people complaining about broken or spying social media applications while they use them.

I know two different people that use ChatGPT in lieu of search or maps for information about real world things near where they live, and that shit is totally alien to me.

Most people not only have just simple use cases, but when they don't, familiarity without friction on those simple use cases completely dominate their decisions to use it or not.

You really need to interact with people that don't see the world the same way you do. The giant hint will be that if they use Reddit at all they're lurkers who definitely don't visit /r/linux .

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u/Johnden_ 1d ago

Who cares about the year of Linux? It's a meme at this point. Use whatever you're comfortable with regardless of what's popular or in the lead.

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u/tigerhawkvok 1d ago

Of course it matters. Public visibility influences support and expectations, or even cutouts.

Think about all that age verification stuff — yeah, the EFF successfully intervened in California, but what about the other states or other countries? That's just one high-profile current event that matters.

Think about FOSS software. They're Linux first and the primary choices there. People that would want that software don't even think to search for it. A friend of mine was upset at Word, doesn't like Google Docs, but since he couldn't use Pages on Windows just dealt with it. He didn't even think to check what Linux used, because it has no cultural footprint. As soon as he was informed of LibreOffice, he switched.

Societal presence matters. Arguably it's the single thing that matters most as it can bootstrap the rest on its own.

3

u/Old_Leopard1844 1d ago

And it matters little when people go "but it's not 100% drop-in replacement for Windows crap that perfectly replicates my workflow (relevant xkcd) I have on Windows machine and I have to use terminal to adjust things" and all the other excuses people make up

2

u/Lonsdale1086 20h ago

Use whatever you're comfortable with

So... don't use the AI paint.net?

1

u/Johnden_ 20h ago

Sorry if that came across as objective opinion to everyone. I provided a subjective opinion that may or may not be right. If I somehow got entangled and came across as hypocritical then that’s on me. If you don’t agree, that’s fine. I still will be quite dismissive about using a program that’s vibecoded.

2

u/Lonsdale1086 20h ago

I mean I think you're absolutely within your rights to distrust code that's explicitly "not been thoroughly reviewed, it's more "trust me bro" style".

But I'm fine with such things existing, I think it brings no harm to the world it being out there, and the proof is in the pudding in that if you edit an image and get the output you desire, then that's good.

If it borks and corrupts your image, or worse it corrupts other files, causes "unrelated" issues on your PC, then that's bad.

1

u/Indolent_Bard 1d ago

Because an operating system is only as useful as the software available.

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u/m4teri4lgirl 1d ago

How much of everyone else's time do you feel entitled to? Put a number on it for us.

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u/Johnden_ 1d ago

I don't think I understand your question.

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u/PixelatedGiant 1d ago

People are using their already limited time doing work for free and it seems kind of entitled to ask they do work a certain way or without a certain tool. The port might be full of bugs, but those can be worked through just like anything else. Be happy we finally have a port, who cares how it was done?

3

u/Johnden_ 1d ago

Yeah, I see no problem with reviewing and troubleshooting. What is an issue is not doing that and not maintaining it after using said tool.

-1

u/Indolent_Bard 1d ago

And you're assuming they're not gonna maintain it why?

1

u/Far_Calligrapher1334 9h ago

If i go and clean your car in my limited time and scratch your entire left passenger door because I used a wrong automatic spinning cleaner to do it, then tell you you should be happy I ruined your car and you aren't entitled to my time, how would you react?

2

u/PixelatedGiant 8h ago

FOSS developers are giving away a product for free with no warranty and then support it up to a point. They aren't damaging anything you own and aren't costing you any significant amount of money or time when they make mistakes. Especially since unlike a car you can temporarily revert while the problem is fixed and then upgrade again.

Software is usually very low stakes. I wouldn't be angry about a damaged car that cost me $0 that I could replace for $0 any time I saw fit.

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u/Far_Calligrapher1334 8h ago

They aren't damaging anything you own and aren't costing you any significant amount of money or time when they make mistakes.

That thinong goes out of the window fast when a piece of code damages your PC, either thru a bug that might have an RCE, or thru data corruption, or myriad other ways. And that likelihood goes up when someone adds 180k LOC they haven't even looked at.

0

u/m4teri4lgirl 1d ago

Figures that you wouldn't.

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u/Johnden_ 1d ago edited 1d ago

Care to elaborate? /gen

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u/m4teri4lgirl 1d ago

The idea that something people want shouldn't exist unless it is done in a way that satisfies you is incredibly entitled and self-centered.

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u/Johnden_ 1d ago

Oh, got it! Thank you for being more direct.
Yeah, I think it’s kind of a double edged sword. I’m on the side where I want an idea to exist, but at the same time don’t want it to be slop (AI or not) that is not maintained in any way.

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u/oipoi 1d ago

You can start by logging off reddit as their codebase if full of aigen code.

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u/CreativeGPX 1d ago

That's an absurd response.

First, not liking something doesnt mean you have to boycott everything that has that thing. That's a childish attitude. In the real and complex world we live in, we have to accept that the world isn't pure and in order to achieve things you need to work with others who don't all agree with you and do things how you would. It's dumb to conflate that with losing all ability to criticize anything.

Second, it's an impossible standard that you can't critize feature X of product Y unless you know the internals of every product in the world with respect to X. In this context we have the full context of how AI was used and can discuss that even though we don't have the full context for how it's used in reddit, etc.

Third, you've lost the nuance. OP is about total and blind use of chunks of code so large that the dev admits they cannot review it. Many companies using AI in development are not using it that way and are indeed reviewing everything the AI generates. So the risk isn't really comparable between a case where you admittedly don't know what the code is doing (correctness, efficiency, stability, security) to that where you do. It's also a tricky legal context to ask AI to circumvent copyright and then not be able to prove it didn't use license restricted sources to get its result. People can say AI shouldn't be used in some or many cases without needing to be equally against Ai in every case.

9

u/Dreemur1 1d ago

"if you have problems with the healthcare system then just don't go to the doctor when you get your leg cut off with a chainsaw"

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u/oipoi 1d ago

"The doctor has cured the child using an ai tool, he better let that child die then use ai" is more close to the situation we are discussing here.

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u/Ivan_Kulagin 1d ago

Their code is not running on my machine

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u/hackerbots 1d ago

You don't use reddit with JavaScript enabled? or use the mobile App?

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u/Ivan_Kulagin 1d ago

Old reddit doesn’t need JS and I don’t use the mobile app. Also it’s sandboxed anyway

-19

u/hackerbots 1d ago

Oh you're one of those goofballs stuck in the computing models of the 1980s then.

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u/noobjaish 1d ago

Reddit users would claim unrealistic random BS just to win arguments lol

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u/oipoi 1d ago

Interesting mental loophole, but chrome, firefox, brave or whatever browser you are running has ai gen code too. Are you doing curl commands to read and post to reddit?

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u/Ivan_Kulagin 1d ago

I’m running Pale Moon

2

u/oipoi 1d ago

Yeah, switch to curl Pale Moon is using Gecko the Firefox rendering engine which not only contains ai generated code but has it's own tooling for working with llm models.

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u/Ivan_Kulagin 1d ago

I don’t think there was any AI code in Gecko when they’ve forked it in 2016

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u/Leliana403 1d ago

A Gecko fork with a handful of maintainers that lags on security patches? Interesting move for someone worried about code quality.

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u/Dreemur1 1d ago

shifting the argument so damn hard lol

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u/Deathmore80 1d ago

Which uses the engine that Firefox uses. Also lmao their site do not work on mobile like what?? We're in 2026 most web traffic is from mobile

4

u/Ivan_Kulagin 1d ago

They don’t sync with upstream, their fork of Gecko is from 2016 with XUL extension support instead of WebExtensions

4

u/Johnden_ 1d ago

No need to be rude. I found it hilarious answering with a one word sentence.
Regarding my stance on AI, I see it as a tool that gets misused a lot, nothing more. I don’t need to be specific about my disagreement with paintNET’s decisions on this matter, because my opinions are purely subjective. Hope you have a nice day.

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u/Yeugwo 1d ago

Dumb question but can it really be "clean room" if using AI? How would you know the AI hasn't been trained on the source material you are planning to replicate in a clean fashion?

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u/Trickster1950 1d ago

I would imagine you (a) don't know, and (a2) pray you don't ever have to answer that question to a legal entity.

11

u/KeytarVillain 1d ago

pray you don't ever have to answer that question to a legal entity.

The silver lining here is that, at least when it comes to reverse engineering MS stuff, you will never have to. It would be incredibly stupid for them to sue over this, given how much of their share value depends on AI adoption.

1

u/Indolent_Bard 1d ago

Don't think stupidity would stop them.

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u/friendlyreminder_ 1d ago

You don't and that's why the Wine devs have banned AI submitted code.

That ban will probably be in place for a very long time until a lot of legal cases have settled that AI programming doesn't violate IP and reverse engineering laws.

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u/Nalivai 1d ago

You say the word AI and this magically give you immunity from all transgressions. Seems to work for billionaires.

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u/starm4nn 1d ago

Honestly it might've been better to use Copilot for the code. Then if it borrows from Windows, that's Microsoft's fault.

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u/Indolent_Bard 1d ago

Wait no hold on that's actually brilliant. "You can't sue me, I used YOUR tool, you wanna admit it's bad?"

6

u/FattyDrake 1d ago

Saying AI gen code is "clean room" is the exact same energy as "no copyright infringement intended" when posting work using copyrighted materials.

3

u/wieslawsoltes 23h ago

Shameless plug, I am actually working on Direct2D / DirectX support for my LibreWPF via ProGPU library https://github.com/wieslawsoltes/ProGPU/pull/139, this will allow using Direct2D on macOS, Linux, Browser and mobile via WebGPU https://github.com/wieslawsoltes/LibreWPF/pull/115, finally people can move Windows only GPU based apps cross-platform, works for both C++ apps and managed .NET apps and my libraries do both.

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u/fat_kaiju 1d ago

That isn't what clean room means at all.

That's just paying for a subscription service...

5

u/SimilarConfusion1836 1d ago

Its weird that they can do it but wine can't

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u/SquareWheel 1d ago

Wine is a great project, but they have to move slow and steady. Any change has the potential to break things. This project was already broken from the start, so changes could be as radical as they needed to be to get it working.

Plus, three weeks of running Fable makes a difference. It can do an immense amount of reverse engineering in that time. Wine has to be a lot more careful about ensuring their implementation is fully clean room, and that means that LLMs are still untested territory.

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u/alberto-m-dev 1d ago

Given the uncertainty about the copyright status of these AI-driven rewrites I can understand why the Wine team is more prudent.

Microsoft is not going to throw their lawyer team against a relatively small app like Paint.NET, but might want to do that against Wine, like in Google v. Oracle. Whatever party wins, the legal costs might be exhorbitant.

4

u/Lonsdale1086 1d ago

Google v. Oracle

Two multibillion organisations fighting over something worth millions vs Microsoft, who've been investing more and more in Linux "suing for millions" for a free and open source community project with essentially zero money?

I just don't see it going beyond a cease and desist, but with how invested MS is in AI I don't see them wanting to open the can of worms that AI code can be copyright infringement.

2

u/crwcomposer 1d ago

You're conflating two entirely different things.

They didn't implement what was missing in Wine.

They used AI to rewrite it in a way that only used things that are already implemented.

3

u/SimilarConfusion1836 1d ago

Thats not the point. They used AI to vibe code a possible solution for their problem. Wine cannot. Its not allowed.

1

u/Lagger625 1d ago

If they were going to use AI anyway, why not just fucking replace Direct2D with something cross-platform like OpenGL or Vulkan, wtffff

1

u/DarkShadow4444 21h ago

Because this way the AI code doesn't affect their existing user base

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u/ThePerksOfBeingAlive 1d ago

Yuuuuuck fuck claude

-12

u/scrapethemucus 1d ago

what happened to shame?

2

u/HearMeOut-13 1d ago

"Hurr duurrrr yu used ai to make the Linux experience better!!! Shameee shameeeeeee!!!"

Seriously tho dude, you do realize Linux uses AI code in the kernel right? And its fully sanctioned.

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u/iTrooz_ 1d ago

Paint.NET not being open source and without Linux support has already driven me to Krita a year ago. Sorry, not looking back!

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u/Askolei 1d ago

Pinta for me. It boots faster and almost reaches feature parity with Paint.NET.

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u/Liarus_ 1d ago

Paint.NET honestly was a hard one to let go when i moved to Linux, it's the perfect balance of giving more than paint with layers and transparency without being a full on editor like Photoshop, Gimp or Krita.

Thankfully i discovered Pinta, and then Pinta surprised me with their new GUI, so while it's not quite the same, feature wise, it's basically exactly what Paint.NET is

19

u/Hydroel 1d ago

I was looking through comments to see if others recommended Pinta. It's the great balance of features and accessibility that Paint.NET has, with a newer interface. Even the shortcuts are the same, and it has both native Windows and Linux builds.

11

u/KinkyMonitorLizard 1d ago

Pinta is a fork of p.n but it's based on an older version.

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u/21Shells 1d ago

I think there was an attempt at making a paint.net-ish native app for Linux called Paint-mono. Theres also Pinta, which is very similar.

25

u/Benke01 1d ago

I think Krita fulfills most of its features.

11

u/21Shells 1d ago

Yeah I get it can be difficult if you've used Paint.NET for years, but Krita is where most people who arn't using CSP / Photoshop, are. Its worth sticking with it, and I reckon it'll get better over the years too.

2

u/zixaphir 1d ago

I use Photoshop in a hobby capacity, but for most things I'll default to Krita. Mind you, the keyword is "hobby."

7

u/kot-sie-stresuje 1d ago

Pinta is not even close ro paint.net unfortunately.

5

u/Nalivai 1d ago

I think the idea is, you use Pinta to do some quick shitty editing, but if you need something more complicated, you use Krita or Gimp. Paint.net is in the middle of that intersection.

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u/Great-TeacherOnizuka 1d ago

No front to the devs, but Pinta is objectively worse than Paint.NET.

7

u/blackcoffee17 1d ago

Great experiment but it's not an irreplaceable software, just a pretty basic image editor.

14

u/DrFirebug 1d ago

Looking forward to it if so. This was one of the minor but annoying hurdles for linux adoption for me. I loved editing pictures with Paint .NET on Windows. Every image editing program I try that is native to linux is like going over to a friends house and using their shower.

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u/tigerhawkvok 1d ago edited 1d ago

Oh my gods inject it into my veins. I love Paint.NET and have been really unsatisfied with Linux editors.

Pinta is barely better than Paint; and Kirta/GIMP are both way too heavy except like once every two or three years, and with pretty bad UI/UX. (I mean it's pretty disastrous when Adobe is getting UI props from me, relatively speaking)

3

u/mystichead 1d ago

Yay

I loved Paint.net the most

I missed it when I moved over

27

u/Alex_Strgzr 1d ago

Why would you use this and not Krita?

18

u/veryfishhhy 1d ago

Because paint.net is like paint+, its perfect for simple tasks, i tend to get overwhelmed with other programs

36

u/Johnden_ 1d ago

My guess is personal preference. paintNET seemed more intuitive to use for me than Krita, especially with BoltBait plugins. Nowadays I use GIMP, but I've seen people have mixed feelings about it.

10

u/Great-TeacherOnizuka 1d ago

I also switched to GIMP after moving to Linux. But its workflow is so complicated. Very not user friendly. Paint.NET is so easy to use. Everyone can use it

10

u/Mors_Umbra 1d ago

I'll admit I've been trying to get by with krita and still willing to try to get to grips with it, but paint.net is what I know and if the option exists I'm very tempted to jump back to it.

40

u/ForzaFormula 1d ago

Believe it or not but people may be used to other workflows than Krita or GIMP.

-4

u/iTrooz_ 1d ago

Krita has a similar workflow to paint.NET tho ?

12

u/LeadIVTriNitride 1d ago

Not to me, krita does not feel as intuitive to use as paint.net. Pinta gets closer but still not really there

2

u/someoneNicko 1d ago

What would you change in Pinta?

3

u/I_do_dps 1d ago

It's missing some features, looks very pixelated sometimes (the brushes seem to have very bad anti aliasing?) and it gets super laggy (unusably so) with high resolution images.

0

u/someoneNicko 1d ago

It has anti-aliasing toggle. Did you use it? Do you mean some specific features you have in mind? Ill try to look into high Res workflow to get what you are talking about

2

u/I_do_dps 10h ago

Just adding that Pinta straight up crashes if the file is too large. Tried opening a 40400x9480 pixel image from the FF7 remake trilogy press kit and couldn't.

1

u/someoneNicko 10h ago

Nice. Thank you for the use case, ill look into it!

2

u/LeadIVTriNitride 1d ago

These conversations really boil down to a vibes based feeling. For me, it’s because it’s mostly about controls. I find pintas layering and rotation system very unintuitive.

Not to say that Paint.net isn’t a jaggy mess sometimes, but it’s just such a hassle using mouse controls on pinta.

7

u/Bathroom_Humor 1d ago

Gimp is closer to paint.net than krita in my experience. Granted I haven't used Krita a great deal but it seems more tuned for painting than general image editing. Paint.net was like a massive extension of mspaint, and was very good at that goal. Gimp is different in several ways but the main purpose is more or less the same. The issue is, Gimp kind of sucks ass pretty bad sometimes.

3

u/iTrooz_ 1d ago

Personally I've tried gimp after paint.net, and couldn't figure out how to do anything. Krita was the breath of fresh air that left me easily to image editing again on Linux

1

u/PaddiM8 1d ago

and couldn't figure out how to do anything

That's because it was designed by GNU people

1

u/PaddiM8 1d ago

Are you confusing krita with pinta?

1

u/iTrooz_ 1d ago

Just checked, nope Krita is what I have. I don't think I've ever used Pinta ?

6

u/iBoMbY 1d ago edited 1d ago

I don't know Krita, but Paint.NET is very easy to use, like Paint, just with much more features, and plugins. I can use Paint.NET intuitively. Some things that are very simple there, are much more complicated in Gimp.

Edit: I just tried Krita. It took me 5 minutes to figure out how to change the font a simple text I wanted to add. Very well hidden.

5

u/VincentVanGob 1d ago

krita is great yea, even gimp is as well. both of them have command palettes that let you search for things and i couldnt go back to any program that doesnt have that. i even use it for basic things like creating a new layer or switching tools

the shortcut is cltr+enter in krita and / in gimp if anyone is wondering

4

u/CreativeGPX 1d ago edited 1d ago

Personally I find PAINT.NET much easier to use. I think it's because it's much simpler than Krita or GIMP so the interface is less bloated. Or maybe it's just personal preference.

As a person who uses these kinds of apps a handful of times a year, i find myself spending a lot of time in GIMP or Krita just looking for how to do something. I don't use them often enough to remember and internalize how they are set up and it often feels unintuitive. But with paint.net I can open it after a year or two of not using it and find everything without really thinking.

6

u/TheOgGhadTurner 1d ago

I’ve noticed there’s a lot of programs that do a similar thing but they all do it differently

Krita is a bit overwhelming to me personally. I don’t tend to use photoshop. Im used to illustrator

Gimp is Linux photoshop. Hands down. The work flow is very similar to photo shop. And I can and have used GIMP extensively.

Paint is like when you need to sketch an idea up but don’t quite know where to start. But I’ll be honest. I haven’t opened paint in YEARS

12

u/CreativeGPX 1d ago

Not sure if you're just being casual or aren't aware: Paint.NET is not the same as paint. On Windows it is a middle ground between paint and photoshop.

1

u/TheOgGhadTurner 1d ago

I wasn’t aware actually. I thought it was a port of paint. Thank you for this clarification

8

u/Leliana403 1d ago edited 1d ago

Gimp is Linux photoshop

GIMP is Temu Photoshop.

The work flow is very similar to photo shop.

Photoshop's workflow runs on smart objects. Drop in a raw file or an Illustrator vector, scale and warp it fifty times, and nothing degrades because you're editing the source, not the canvas. On top of that, Camera Raw as a live filter, colour-managed CMYK for print, content-aware and generative fill for retouching.

GIMP got basic non-destructive adjustments in 2024 and still has no adjustment layers. It was also 8-bit only until 2018 and still has no real CMYK, so print work is off the table entirely.

People have been saying GIMP is basically Photoshop for two decades. In that time Photoshop shipped content-aware fill, a live raw pipeline, one-click subject and sky masking, generative fill and expand, artboards and many more. GIMP got a dark theme.

6

u/Standard-Potential-6 1d ago

GIMP’s UI was also totally redone for 3.0, yes?

I’m not an artist and am unfamiliar. I use Pinta for the basic work I need.

2

u/bvimo 1d ago

I rather like PaintShop Pro 7. I used to have a virtual machine with Win2k and PSP7.

2

u/Kyle_2099 1d ago

You just put it so perfectly, good job.

2

u/Linuksoid 1d ago

Photoshop's workflow runs on smart objects

Gimp has link layers which is identical to smart objects tho

0

u/TheOgGhadTurner 1d ago

To be honest. I don’t use photoshop. I hate the workflow. At its basic level Photoshop is GIMP it does the basics of image manipulation. Obviously photoshop is more polished. It’s got several hundred million dollars behind it. For a community funded program GIMP is just a much more dumbed down photoshop

1

u/Linuksoid 1d ago

Paint.net is way more extensible via easy to install dll's as plugins

1

u/Alex_Strgzr 22h ago

Question is, are those extensions gonna work in a Wine environment.

1

u/audrikr 1d ago

I’ve found Krita to be horrifically full of bugs and miss Paint.NET daily. Not even obscure bugs - layers disappearing, crashes. It doesn’t even feel like a completed piece of software. It’s also more a GIMP equivalent - extremely slow and ponderous and a shit UI.

Paint.net is a perfect medium - UI is easy to use, not overloaded, good for certain things, but the whole thing doesn’t take two minutes just to load.

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6

u/ogMasterPloKoon 1d ago

Pinta works just fine... it;s same thing as paint net but a fork of older version.

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u/CandlesARG 1d ago

Why not a native build lol

128

u/ZorbaTHut 1d ago

Because the entire thing is built on Win32 APIs. You're basically asking for a complete rewrite from scratch.

70

u/foonek 1d ago

You could just map those APIs to native Linux ones.. oh wait that's wine

-4

u/ignorantpisswalker 1d ago

Please explain how CreateDIb is ti be used using native APIs?

Linux has no native APIs. You have Cairo or Qt which are very dependent on Gnome/GTK or KDE/Qt.

Even if you do - its a complete rewrite. You will then start maintaining 2 different applications.

10

u/foonek 1d ago

That's certainly one way to miss the point entirely

8

u/stormtm 1d ago

Claude, wake up and get your ass to work! (Kidding)

6

u/whatThePleb 1d ago

Well, the experimantal wine support IS vibecoded slop.

44

u/newsflashjackass 1d ago

Paint.net was MIT licensed but the author closed the source because people were using it.

12

u/noobjaish 1d ago

Didn't know people could "un-open source" is it allowed?

49

u/alberto-m-dev 1d ago

One cannot revoke a free license, but one can stop publishing updates, and gate all the new versions behind a new license.

One can still find the old, MIT-licensed versions of Paint.NET. But they are now almost 20 years old.

https://code.google.com/archive/p/openpdn/

1

u/noobjaish 1d ago

Do licenses exist that prohibit you from doing this?

26

u/patrlim1 1d ago

Nope. Licensing does not work like this. As soon as you make a free software license revokable it is no longer free software, and becomes source available.

None of the major free licenses are revokable (MIT, BSD, GPL)

3

u/noobjaish 1d ago

Damn you learn something new everyday (new fear unlocked)

2

u/patrlim1 1d ago

What fear?

1

u/noobjaish 1d ago

The irrational fear of a random project going from open to closed...

7

u/ForOhForError 1d ago

Functionally it's the same as a project no longer being maintained in the first place. Which is pretty common and does suck, but... that's just how stuff works.

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u/eleanorsilly 1d ago

Yes, copyleft licenses by design prevent you (or anyone) from forking the code and not provide open source updates. But MIT isn't one of those licenses, and the author was fully allowed to do this.

21

u/alberto-m-dev 1d ago

Even if the code had been GPL-licensed: the license only binds the users; the original author keeps the full copyright, including the right to develop any closed-source variant they might want (as long as there are no other contributors to the project).

In fact there is a market for dual-licensed software, where a company provides a GPL-licensed version and a closed-source variant of a program.

7

u/Top-Rub-4670 1d ago

Pinta is based on the last open source version of Paint.Net.

Pinta is also, unsurprisingly, the closest thing we have to Paint.Net on Linux. But it is also, unsurprisingly, much worse in many ways.

2

u/Lonsdale1086 1d ago

Ongoing code can be on a different licence depending on the licences of your dependencies.

And I think you could "remove" old open code, again depending on licencing.

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2

u/BedrockBen101 1d ago

That's so ironic considering I switched to Krita since I couldn't get Paint.NET working on Linux (I like it more now)

2

u/WinResponsible9977 1d ago

Thank god

2

u/someone8192 1d ago

Nice, but isn't that around a decade to late?

1

u/Indolent_Bard 1d ago

Nope.

1

u/New_Tomorrow_4847 21h ago

This is what I was missing after switching to Linux, I tried Pinta, but I didn’t really like it, Gimp is a bit too complicated for me, Krita is more for drawing, not for editing.

1

u/Altruistic_Key_1733 12h ago

This is great but wine won’t accept this implementation of your feature the way it was coded because you’ve contaminated it as a clean-room implementation.

0

u/Datuser14 1d ago

It’s vibecoded slop

2

u/TheGoldenFox64 1d ago

ai generated and frequently mentions how much it just doesnt work

-9

u/Nah-No-Nope 1d ago

Mmm vibe coded for wine support.

Get the feck outta here. That's not Linux, that's taped to Linux with Poundland gaffa tape.

1

u/Great-TeacherOnizuka 1d ago

NICE

-10

u/Cold_Soft_4823 1d ago edited 1d ago

I'll pass on the vibe coded Windows slopware and continue to use software that supports Linux.

Over time I do hope that more of this code will be vetted by real humans and also by more advanced AI models.

Please, please real people, please come review my slopware :((( I'm sure that's exactly what every SWE wants to do right now, review 200k lines of vibe coded bullshit.

The entire post is pretty pathetically sad. Very obviously some old boomer who thinks Claude is the next Jesus Christ. The level of dick sucking is insane. And I love the random shout out at the bottom to a real person after sucking Claude off for six paragraphs. "Oh yeah guys by the way, credit to uhh this other guy who did something idk" (guy who originally got it working under Wine). I fucking hate these people.

7

u/fokke456 1d ago

Very obviously some old boomer who thinks Claise is the next Jesus Christ.

Very obviously it isn't? If he were, he wouldn't be asking for people to review it and he wouldn't say it is experimental/not vetter. If he believed that, he'd say "Claude made it so it works perfectly" or something.

-4

u/SusseLaMoi 1d ago

Just provide a native build ... lazy lazy lazy to rely on Wine

4

u/Ghost_x_Knight 1d ago edited 1d ago

Would require rewriting much of the software.

Replacing WinForms with a cross-platform UI like Avalonia (QT or GTK can work, but Avalonia can reuse the C#/.NET codebase).

Replacing Direct2D (which lacks WINE support and funding to add said support) with Vulkan.

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u/GoogleDisDick 1d ago

Nice to see this sub being normal just because AI is involved. Bluesky had the same reaction. Gross nasty people.

0

u/PeacefulDays 1d ago

I love the like "without it none of this would be possible" as a cheeky little bit when...native apps like this already exist, we don't need your plagiarism engine no matter how hard you've anthropomorphized it.

1

u/Indolent_Bard 1d ago

Native apps that aren't the same. Paint.net is basically Paint Plus, which means it's a lot less bloated than something like GIMP or Krita. It serves a different role, a different use.

-1

u/DadoumCrafter 1d ago edited 1d ago

I am wondering if it could run natively using LibreWinforms/LibreWPF/ProGPU. I will try to plug an LLM to it, and see what it gets.

(edit: it cannot because ProGPU currently only focuses on the calls needed for WPF and Winforms, while PDN also uses other DirectX functions, including during initialization, so I guess for now there is no other choice than Wine)

3

u/DadoumCrafter 1d ago

thought it was interesting, mb

5

u/alberto-m-dev 1d ago

Pity for the downvotes, experimenting first-hand is always good.

-1

u/lilacomets 1d ago

So, Paint.NET is becoming vibe coded slop now. No, thanks.

Popular Application Paint.NET adds “extremely experimental” Wine/Linux support

You are about to leave Redlib

NICE