June 4 Distro of the Day: Grafpup 2.00

The Distro of the Day for June 4th is Grafpup 2.00. Grafpup is a compact distribution loosely based on Puppy Linux made for graphic artists and other imaging professionals. It includes the major graphics applications like Gimp and Inkscape, along with a variety of support programs and extra features. Despite this, the distro maintains its small size - the complete LivePC is under 150MB!

       

Grafpup was made by a graphics designer, and it shows. All applications are configured for color management and there is a basic selection of color profiles included in the standard install. For those doing photographic work, there is almost complete support for raw image formats via both dcraw and the ufraw plugin (both Gimp and Cinepaint), as well as the gtkam utility for directly connecting a wide variety of cameras. It also includes Scribus and Abiword for publishing, and Gutenprint provides a wide range of printer drivers.

The grafpup interface is nice and minimal. The window manager is Openbox, and icons use a single click to activate. Click on the colorful dog paw in the bottom toolbar to bring up a menu of applications. The applications are all gtk+ so they have a consistent look-and-feel.

       

Being a one-man-show and relatively new, Grafpup 2.00 still has some glitches. Some icons in the start menu show up incorrectly, the default text editor doesn't work correctly in the rxvt terminal, and I've found the power-off button doesn't always work. However, I'm sure these will be fixed over time.

For a fast and fun LivePC with lots of graphics applications to play with, check out Grafpup 2.00!