Solang's New Photo Viewer in C++
Looking for a lite photo viewer for GNOME? Take a glance at Solang, which is now in alpha state. As developer Santanu Sinha, who wrote the application in C++, makes clear, we're not talking about a clone of F-spot written in Mono.
Both programs, F-Spot and Solang, have mutually exclusive features. As Sinhu says in his blog, his primary concern was speed: it should run on his "busted old laptop." As far as photo editing, he acknowledges that other programs do a better job of touching up RAW photos, such as RAWStudio, GIMP, or CinePaint.
Solang 0.1 currently imports and identifies photos from diverse directories and from cameras (via PTP). Users can tag these photos While downloading them and later on. Photo management based on file or content characteristics is possible and this through a rather attractive yet understated user interface, which also provides some basic editing capabilities.
What may not sound terribly exciting is simply that this is version 0.1. Version 0.2 is already in the plans, which should include paged views for a performance boost and a zoom function in browser view. The subsequent version should also provide batch editing and an undo feature for certain processing (turning, rotating and scaling). It should also provide exporting of selected photos to particular directories.
To test the Solang alpha version, download the code from a mirror site. Packages are also available for Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic).
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.

News
-
Red Hat Releases RHEL 10 Early
Red Hat quietly rolled out the official release of RHEL 10.0 a bit early.
-
openSUSE Joins End of 10
openSUSE has decided to not only join the End of 10 movement but it also will no longer support the Deepin Desktop Environment.
-
New Version of Flatpak Released
Flatpak 1.16.1 is now available as the latest, stable version with various improvements.
-
IBM Announces Powerhouse Linux Server
IBM has unleashed a seriously powerful Linux server with the LinuxONE Emperor 5.
-
Plasma Ends LTS Releases
The KDE Plasma development team is doing away with the LTS releases for a good reason.
-
Arch Linux Available for Windows Subsystem for Linux
If you've ever wanted to use a rolling release distribution with WSL, now's your chance.
-
System76 Releases COSMIC Alpha 7
With scores of bug fixes and a really cool workspaces feature, COSMIC is looking to soon migrate from alpha to beta.
-
OpenMandriva Lx 6.0 Available for Installation
The latest release of OpenMandriva has arrived with a new kernel, an updated Plasma desktop, and a server edition.
-
TrueNAS 25.04 Arrives with Thousands of Changes
One of the most popular Linux-based NAS solutions has rolled out the latest edition, based on Ubuntu 25.04.
-
Fedora 42 Available with Two New Spins
The latest release from the Fedora Project includes the usual updates, a new kernel, an official KDE Plasma spin, and a new System76 spin.