Last Updated on May 22, 2022
Image Viewer
Images are part of every day internet usage, and are particularly important for social media engagement. A good image viewer is an essential part of any operating system.
You may have previously used the Photos app in Windows 10 or Windows Image Viewer in earlier editions. Neither of these programs are available in Linux. And they are proprietary software too.
Fortunately, there’s a ton of high quality open source image viewers available in Ubuntu that are far superior.
feh
feh is an X11 image viewer aimed mostly at console users. Unlike most other viewers, it does not have a fancy GUI, but simply displays images. It is controlled via command-line arguments and configurable key/mouse actions.
feh is present in the Ubuntu Software app under the name feh-lreenaers, but at the time of writing it doesn’t actually work. Instead, install the Ubuntu package for feh with the command:
$ sudo apt install feh
Regards
Regards is billed as a modern photo viewer. It supports a very large range of image formats. There’s OpenGL/OpenCL support. The software can also play videos.
Regards isn’t available in the Ubuntu Software app. And you can’t install it using apt as a package isn’t available in the Ubuntu repositories. Instead, we can install the software from the command-line.
Download the file RegardsViewer_2.66.2_amd64.deb from the project’s GitHub repository with Firefox. Save the file. Open a Terminal and change to the directory where you saved the .deb file.
We’ll use dpkg to install the .deb package. dpkg is used to install, remove, and provide information about .deb packages. dpkg only installs a package and will notify you of any dependencies that need to be installed, but it will not install them.
$ sudo dpkg -i ./RegardsViewer_2.66.2_amd64.deb
This command doesn’t successfully complete on a fresh installation of Ubuntu 21.04. as you’ll be missing a ton of libraries. Don’t try to find and locate all the libraries manually. Instead, you can force the installation of all the dependencies and install Regards using apt:
$ sudo apt update --fix-missing
$ sudo apt install -f
Page 6 – Photo and Image Editor
Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Introduction / Office Suite
Page 2 – Web Browser
Page 3 – Media Player
Page 4 – Email Client
Page 5 – Image Viewer
Page 6 – Photo and Image Editor
Page 7 – Audio Editor
Page 8 – Video Editor
Page 9 – PDF Viewer
All articles in this series:
 Read our complete collection of recommended free and open source software. Our curated compilation covers all categories of software. The software collection forms part of our series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. There are hundreds of in-depth reviews, open source alternatives to proprietary software from large corporations like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. There are also fun things to try, hardware, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. |
Thanks for the open source recommendations. I’m keen on moving away from all proprietary software, including no charge software which is closed source. I’m interested in a few more areas covering such as communication tools, instant messaging, and desktops.
But we recommend you explore LibreOffice. You’ll probably find it meets all your needs and more besides.
You may find it an almost usable alternative, but a long way from being a realistic alternative.
Probably the single biggest reason than Linux will NEVER replace Windows.
I use Linux as my desktop OS, and have done so for many years, but I have Windows on my laptop for the programmes that just don’t cut it on Linux.
Everyone uses Linux whether they know it or not. BTW, it’s programs not programmes.
Umm, no Gabby, the English spelling is ‘programmes’.
Gabbling is correct. The British use programmes for TV/radio but programs for computer related.
OnlyOffice is another that’s number 1 goal is MS Office compatibility. WPS Office is nearly a perfect MS Office clone with added tabbed browsing and an integrated cloud. Finally, if you really need microsoft, you can access the web-based versions of office.
The biggest thing you need for a successful transition to Linux is an open mind. Linux is NOT A WINDOWS CLONE. If you think it is you will fail. You have to accept things are done a bit differently. If you can keep an open mind you will love the transition, if you are looking for a Windows clone you will fail.
I am perfectly happy with my Linux system. I’ve made it so it looks identical to Windows; with a few tweaks and additions. The open source software I used on Windows runs sweetly on Linux.
It doesn’t matter to me that Linux is very different under the bonnet. In the same way I don’t care what programming language is used to write a program. Nor do I care whether a program is licensed under MIT, GNU GPL, Apache etc. What matters is that I have things to do. My Linux system does everything I need to do. At the end of the day that’s what’s important.
The Gimp is fine for those who simply take pictures with their phones or compact cameras.
For those whose photography is at the higher end (and who tend to shoot in raw mode), it isn’t the best program. For these, the better alternatives to Adobe programs are Darktable or Rawtherapee.
We cover the best RAW Processing Tools in this roundup.