Krita thumbnails for Nautilus,Nemo file browser

image data/images/blog/2016/01/2016-01-17_ora-kra-thumbnails.jpg

Nemo file browser ( Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon ) with Krita (*.kra files ) thumbnails 


[update January 2016, first version published on November 2013]

A thumbnailer for Krita files (*.kra) and Open Raster files (*.ora compatible Mypaint, Gimp, Krita and Pinta) for Linux : Gnome 3.x File ( Nautilus ) , Cinnamon ( Nemo )  and other compatible GTK3 compatible file browsers ( File of Elementary OS, Nautilus fork of Ubuntu , probably even SpaceFM Gtk3 ).  

Install :

Install the package, then restart the system :

Ubuntu 14.04 LTS , Linux Mint 17.1/17.2/17.3 , Elementary OS 0.3 Freya : 


Fedora : 
sudo dnf install gnome-kra-ora-thumbnailer

Arch Linux, Antergos, Manjaro AUR :


Sources ( or other distros ) : 

63 comments

a

  André - Reply

Nice. Can't wait for further news about your change.^^

l

  lewatoto - Reply

i don't know if i understood wrong the instructions but in the step 2 on github there no exist a file named ora.thumbnailer it is openraster.thumbnailer, thanks for this (works excelent on fedora 19)

d

  David REVOY OP , - Reply

@André : :-)

@lewatoto : Thanks pointing me it ; indeed a typo I made while writing the documentation. Fixed :) Nice to know it works also in Fedora too.

a

  André - Reply

Did you change only the desktop environment or the complete distribution?

f

  flem - Reply

Salut David,

encore une fois merci. :D

Un petit bug dans ton fichier "README.md", en ligne 38 :
sudo cp ora.thumbnailer /usr/share/thumbnailers/openraster.thumbnailer

devrait être :
sudo cp openraster.thumbnailer /usr/share/thumbnailers/openraster.thumbnailer

À part ça, la commande pour quitter Nautilus (nautilus -q**) ne marche pas chez moi mais ça n'a aucune importance.
En quittant normalement et en relançant, les thumbnails apparaissent parfaitement. :)

Génial, merci.

d

  David REVOY OP , - Reply

@flem : Merci Flem ! C'est déjà modifié et désolé pour abuser de mes testers avec mes typos de documentation .

@André : I switched to Manjaro XFCE too month ago , then Arch XFCE ( this one I broken with a bad 3.10 dirty install ) , then a short visit to OpenSuse 13.1 Gnome , then I came back to Manjaro Minimal , with Gnome package installed manually. Today , I learned about 'Antergos' a Gnome 3 distrib based on Arch. Sounds good for my next install :)

a

  Aurélien Gâteau - Reply

Oh, you moved to GNOME... As long as you continue to amaze us with your artwork it does not matter, I am still a fan :) I am sorry I missed you at Capitole du Libre, will be more careful next year!

d

  David REVOY OP , - Reply

@Aurélien Gâteau : Hey Aurélien ; thx ! yes, too bad we didn't met. I was around very long.
By the way , I'm still a Konversation , Kdenlive and Krita hardcore user, and my Gnome got a KDEbase in it ; so I can even call KDE system settings from the Gnome menu =)
I'll keep my system hybrid for long time , I think.

o

  Otto - Reply

Welcome to Gnome, you are gonna like it here! :)
Thank you for the thumbnailer, really useful and it was really easy to install. Cheers!

c

  Camille Bissuel - Reply

Très utile, bravo et merci beaucoup !!!!

m

  Marco - Reply

I'll check the recent video review of Antergos on the Linux Action Show. But why did you move from your previous configuration? (Mint+Kde I think to remember) Are there particular advantages? I wonder how Steamos will be, because I would like to learn how to use Hammer and get into games from the Modding point of view.

d

  David REVOY OP , - Reply

@Marco : Hey, I'll do a next article about it ; but in a nutshell ; Wacom and color calibration support is way better on Gnome 3 ; also the compositor performances are now good. So, it's good to can work on a modern desktop.
About SteamOS ; I have no opinion yet ; as I still don't know the architecture, the toolkit or code who will be used for display. I just hope it will be based on a popular existing desktop ; not reinventing the wheel again on Linux.

m

  Matt Jordan - Reply

I look forward to your article about why you switched. I plan to upgrade over the holidays and I'm still trying to decide which way to go. :)

a

  André - Reply

Downloaded the new "Mint 16: Petra" today with the new Cinnamon 2.0. Will give it a try.^^

d

  David REVOY OP , - Reply

@André : Hi André. Becarefull : Mint team got dev, but no Wacom user/tester ; so what happen is a total breakage of the Wacom tools AFAIR ; http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p … 5&p=791245 ; I didn't tested.
Also see " Wacom Tablet does not work under Cinnamon 2.0 " : https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon/issues/2686

a

  André - Reply

Sh**. What distro should I use instead with gnome 3.10?

d

  David REVOY OP , - Reply

@André : I don't know. For the moment, and as far as I know. I don't recommend any Ubuntu based distro. Even Ubuntu Gnome edition is still 3.8.

On 3.10 ; there is this :
- OpenSuse 13.1 Gnome
- Antergos
- last Fedora
- and Arch / Manjaro installation from CLI

a

  André - Reply

Hi,

thanks!:)

I installed all of these distros in a virtual machine and i like OpenSuse and Antergos most. But I'm a totally newbie on these platforms. I used Ubuntu before. So I don't know how to compile krita and all the other painting software there.^^

d

  David REVOY OP , - Reply

@André : The two you mention are really nice. Antegos is probably less stable ( rolling + based on arch) but the most flexible. Here I tested OpenSuse Gnome during 24h as a full install. I could get all running, but I love too much Arch AUR system ; so I decided to go back Manjaro. But to get Gnome 3.10 running on Manjaro it's hard; you have to remove everypackage almost, or run the installation from terminal. I'm pretty sure, my next test will be Antergos. Shouldn't be hard to switch from Ubuntu :
Once you know this few basic ( replace PACKAGENAME with your package name , no caps needed :-) :

update all :
sudo pacman -Syuu

install :
sudo pacman -S PACKAGENAME

remove
sudo pacman -R PACKAGENAME

install AUR package ( community package, larger than PPA base )
yaourt PACKAGENAME

Here I use 'pamac' to install or remove package , it's really 'synaptic' like, and I update system with terminal ( rarely , when all works ).

For building Krita, my previous article with building "Krita for cats" was proof tested by me 2 weeks ago on Arch and OpenSuse. I updated the wiki of calligra with correct dependencies list.
Good luck !

m

  Marco - Reply

SteamOS is out:
ostore.steampowered.com/steamos/

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamu … 741989999/

SteamOS is a fork (derivative) of Debian GNU/Linux. The first version (SteamOS 1.0) is called 'alchemist' and it is based on the Debian 'wheezy' (stable 7.1) distribution.
The major changes made in SteamOS are:
Backported eglibc 2.17 from Debian testing
Added various third-party drivers and updated graphics stack (Intel and AMD graphics support still being worked on)
Updated kernel tracking the 3.10 longterm branch (currently 3.10.11)
Custom graphics compositor designed to provide a seamless transition between Steam, its games and the SteamOS system overlay
Configured to auto-update from the Valve SteamOS repositories
Q: What are the SteamOS Hardware Requirements?
Intel or AMD 64-bit capable processor
4GB or more memory
500GB or larger disk
NVIDIA graphics card (AMD and Intel graphics support coming soon)
UEFI boot support
USB port for installation

Unfortunately my motherboard hasn't UEFI boot support

m

  Martin - Reply

Since a few days FEDORA 20 is available. It comes with Gnome 3.10.

Will you give it a try?

d

  David REVOY OP , - Reply

@Martin : Hi Martin, no. I'm really fine with Manjaro since last summer. It works, I have so no reasons to change. I gave a try to OpenSuse 13.1 Gnome 3.10 from end November ; but after the use of pacman and yaourt for Arch/Manjaro package management, any other solution feels complex to me.

s

  Storm - Reply

Greetings!

So this is for Gnome... how about KDE? I'm running Arch Linux with KDE. I have "extra/kdegraphics-thumbnailers" installed and still no .kra thumbnails in Dolphin. Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance,
Storm

d

  David REVOY OP , - Reply

@Storm : Hey Storm ; KDE teams ( well Calligra teams .... Well , Krita team ) was first to implement a cool thumbnailer.
You can find a screenshot about how to activate here http://www.davidrevoy.com/article155/li … r-painters ( part 7 ) ; it should be labeled "Calligra files" in Dolphin Preferences/Preview options :-) Maybe they renamed it , or split open-raster from Calligra files (*.kra) . Good luck !

s

  Storm - Reply

Thanks for the answer!

However, the option is missing from the list. No "Calligra images" or "Krita images" either. There is "Open raster archiving images" which is enabled but other than that, nothing. The only options not enabled are text files and some other specific non-image files.

d

  David REVOY OP , - Reply

@Storm : Oh weird it doesn't appears anymore. Would it be a refactoring on the KDE/Dolphin side ? A packaging/building missing flag thing from the ArchLinux ? ( I doubt ) Or maybe it was split in another package ( maybe https://www.archlinux.org/packages/extr … mbnailers/ ) ? If you get the solution, I'm curious ! good luck

m

  Mauricio Marinho - Reply

I'm having an error when installing this, manager to fix something related to pixbuf, but still have this:

"configure: error: Package requirements (gdk-pixbuf-2.0 gio-2.0 libarchive) were not met:

No package 'libarchive' found

Consider adjusting the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable if you
installed software in a non-standard prefix.

Alternatively, you may set the environment variables THUMBNAILER_CFLAGS
and THUMBNAILER_LIBS to avoid the need to call pkg-config.
See the pkg-config man page for more details."

Can anyone help me?

d

  David REVOY OP , - Reply

@Mauricio Marinho : Hi, it sounds like the library requirement were not met on your system ; what distribution are you using ? I could compile it in 'buntu 14.04 base here

m

  Mauricio Marinho - Reply

Hi David, i'm using Ubuntu 14.04 with LXDE desktop (extra info, should it help). When I run the "locate libarchive" command, these are the most common paths:

/var/lib/dpkg/info/libarchive13:amd64.list (or other name after 'amd64.')
/usr/share/doc/libarchive13
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libarchive.so.13.1.2

So... Maybe any issue with naming/path or version?

d

  David REVOY OP , - Reply

@Mauricio Marinho : weird , here I have similar system 64bit version, had no issue compiling with what indicated on github. I've packaged a 64bit *.deb ; might be easy http://www.davidrevoy.com/XYZ/gnome-kra … _amd64.deb ; also it works only with Nautilus and Nemo ; LXDE use PCFMan usually, or another file manager.

m

  Mauricio Marinho - Reply

The .deb package works fine! I'm using nautilus on my LXDE, freedom of choice is awesome like that.

Thank you (:

d

  David REVOY OP , - Reply

@Mauricio Marinho : Oh, good news for the *.deb ; I rarely pack them ( I do it with checkinstall , and it's note the 'right' way to do it as far as I read on Ubuntu 'how-to' dev guide , but it works with my local machines and I'm too stupid to maintain a PPA xD ). I'm happy it works for you ! :-) good continuation

m

  Mauricio Marinho - Reply

I have no problems with .deb files, also think they're easier to use since i'm relatively new to ubuntu (been using for 3 years now, partially because Blender > you > MyPaint :P ), some months ago I could not even compile stuff, so yeah, .deb and ppas are ok, even though I've read in a lot of places it wasn't ideal.

It only showed me a warning when opening your .deb, saying there could be "serious" issues because you didn't write your name as developer somewhere, but I've just ignored and installed it.

d

  David REVOY OP , - Reply

@Mauricio Marinho : Thanks for the feedback. Ha sure, I must edit the package info one day in this *.deb for the warning xD

p

  Przemek - Reply

Hi Dave,
I`d like to confirm: thumbs works with Linux Mint 17.1 Cinnamon. I've had to install all dev stuff (cmake, git, autogen). Next I've install gnome-common, libgtk2.0-dev and libarchive-dev because of error described below:

"configure: error: Package requirements (gdk-pixbuf-2.0 gio-2.0 libarchive) were not met:

No package 'gdk-pixbuf-2.0' found
No package 'gio-2.0' found
No package 'libarchive' found"

After cleaning cache and restart (don't know why reboot was required :)) I have kra and ora thumbnails in system.

Maybe some1 find this info useful.

d

  David REVOY OP , - Reply

@Przemek : Thanks for the feedback. I'll keep an eye on it, maybe 'buntu/debian team plays *again* with renaming arbitrary librairies for providing multiples versions. For the easy way, I packed a *.deb with checkinstall , It works with 'buntus 14.04, 14.10 , Mint 17 and 17.1 :
http://www.davidrevoy.com/XYZ/gnome-kra-ora_1-1_amd64.deb

e

  el_silloneb - Reply

Many thanks for the .deb, I was having the same difficulties as Przemek!

However, I run several machines and a couple of them are old and only support x86 architecture, would you be willing and able to produce a .deb for x86?

Thanks again as it works like a charm on my x64 machines!

d

  David REVOY OP , - Reply

@el_silloneb : Hi ! unfortunately, I can't produce x86 ; I would need to buy a PC with x86 only to do it and I'll need to reinstall a 'buntu system. ( I'm on Antergos, right now, I 'm testing other distro ) You can build it on your x86 computer ; the full howto do it is on the README and it's not complex. I do the *.deb using 'sudo checkinstall' at the end ; so you probably can do the x86 package.

e

  el_silloneb - Reply

Thanks for getting back so fast, sorry it took me a bit longer.
I'll give that a try and see how I do, I'm more of a user-end guy and don't have much success with anything non-GUI but I'll give it a shot. Thanks for the heads up about Antergos (yeah, just when I thought I'd stopped distro hopping!) it looks great but it breaks every time I install it, I'm going to have to get some help from the guys on the forums there...
One last thing; I've only just worked out that you're the guy making all the great Krita brush presets that I've been using for a while now so many, many thanks for those! They're greatly appreciated.

d

  David REVOY OP , - Reply

@el_silloneb : Thank you for your words on my brush :-)
About Antergos, I can't advice it anymore : last week was a little drama ; between Gnome 3.16 coming in arch repo + Plasma 5 being adopted to replace Kde4 and the Antergos team deciding to launch a new ISO and installer at the same time. I decided to move back to the 'buntu LTS ecosystem ( choosing Linux Mint 17.1 Cinnamon , and build on it Krita 2.9.2 myself ).
I really understand you prefer GUI over CLI ; I really also do !
The problem on Linux is that maintainers of various 'extra' projects are fading like snow on the sun. The only distribution who got the ORA/KRA thumbnailer in the repo is Fedora right now. The one available for the Arch users in AUR is an outdated Gnome 2 ORA/KRA thumbnailer , for old nautilus. I'm even not sure if this old thumbnailer could work with Caja , the file explorer of MATE. Good luck selecting your distribution ; it's always really tricky.

j

  Julien - Reply

Hello David

Great post.

Just to let you know that *.ora files are not typically MyPaint files (if I'm not mistaking). They are "Open Raster" format.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenRaster Which is not bound to any program. And Gimp can also open and write that format. Maybe more program will handle this in the future.

d

  David REVOY OP , - Reply

@Julien : :-) Thanks. Yes, I know it. I tried to take a 'shortcut' in my article, to explain things in a simplier fashion to new comer, but that wasn't really fair. I'll correct :)

j

  Julien - Reply

Ha. Yes. Of course. Thanks for updating :)

r

  Raphael Barros - Reply

I've been using it since the first time you posted and it has been working great, thx!
So, it seems you've changing distros pretty frequently. Do you have any tips on doing it so frequently? I mean, I've been postponing doing a fresh update of Ubuntu and trying some distros (like Artegos, Kubuntu and Fedora or OpenSuse), but even the slightest idea of having to reinstall and reconfigure everything makes me tired.

d

  David REVOY OP , - Reply

@Julien : Thanks again for the correction ;-)

@Raphael Barros : Hey, the main tip I have is to keep the installation on minimum 3 partitions ; the root ' / ' , the 'swap' and one for '/home'. When I reinstall an O.S. I only overwrite the root ' / ' partition. My workstation main PC here is still on Linux Mint 17 Cinnamon ( since December 2014 I think, and previous distro was Xubuntu 14.04LTS, so I'm sticking with 14.04 packages since almost 2 years, I'm not really distro jumping anymore ). I'll follow the 16.04 LTS series in April.
I had the new 17.1 , 17.2 Mint and last weeks 17.3 via update , without reinstall, and it was smooth each time. I trust the Mint team now, I never experienced this on Linux before. That's why I'm sticking to Mint for my main productive distribution. The library didn't changed this much, so I even could develop advanced habit and bash script to boost the productivity on Pepper&Carrot.
On my laptop, I'm doing experimental test ; I install new distributions each month ( OpenSUSE, Fedora 23 Workstation, ArchLinux, Manjaro, Antergos ) to feed my curiosity and build my opinion on other distro. The laptop is in my living room and ideal to test ( real install , not a virtual box ) and test color profiling support / wacom support / Krita performance on compositor, etc... And from my deep test Linux Mint/UbuntuLTS/Elementary are still my favorite package distribution to build a workstation :)

g

  Grosbill - Reply

Do you like miyazaki style?

d

  David REVOY OP , - Reply

@Grosbill : Hayao Miyazaki is one of my heros

m

  Michał - Reply

Hey mate, thanks for this feature, it's very useful - finally I can sort out mess in kra files:)

r

  renaud - Reply

merci pour ce "greffon"
ça fonctionne parfaitement sur UBUNTU 15.10 ça manquait et c'est vraiment très pratique

t

  Taposy Rabeya - Reply

Really great workflow tips. Thanks for the great help you provide by your post.

r

  Raphael Barros - Reply

Thx a lot for these great ideas! I'll try this approach from now on :)

c

  Casquette Obey - Reply

it's very useful - finally I can sort out mess in kra files.

w

  Wahffle - Reply

Unfortunately I can't get this to work with .kra files on Elementary OS Freya 0.3.2 (Files 0.2.4). I tested this on ubuntu 15.10 and it worked fine, but I can't get the same results on elementary. I already removed the thumbnail cache folder, created a really small file to see if the system has some kind of max. file size for thumbnails, but still no success (.ora files' thumbnail preview seem to work though)

d

  David REVOY OP , - Reply

@Wahffle : aww... Too bad to learn about this ; I hope Elementary team will keep in sync with Nemo and Nautilus about the spec/standards for the Elementary 'files' thumbnails generator. Thanks for the feedback about it.

a

  Alexey_Ost - Reply

Tnx. :)

h

  hdsquare - Reply

(Linux Mint 17.2 Rafaela)
Seems that it can work almost right away, without restarting the computer, by just restarting the file manager (in my case, Caja)! I cruelly "restarted" it by killing Caja's process in the System Monitor's resources tab, since Caja relaunches automatically (I assume all file managers do this).

d

  David REVOY OP , - Reply

Thank you for the feedback about MATE desktop environment, I didn't tested this thumbnailer on MATE, and I thought MATE developers kept the old GTK2 way to manage thumbnails. I was wrong, it's mean now the thumbnailer works for Nautilus, Nemo, Caja, PCmanFM. Good! The thumbnailer is also now in AUR for Arch/Manjaro/Antergos/AprilOS users , and in Fedora official repositories. Good news for this piece of code.

If you filemanager auto launch after killing it, it's probably because the filemanager is needed for something else. I guess in your case, the management of desktop icons. So, there is a daemon running to recover Caja in case of crash or not running, for not leaving the user with a empty dekstop after a little crash.

Thanks for the feedback!

a

  Antoine - Reply

avoid, doesn't work in linux mint 18 xfce

d

  David REVOY OP , - Reply

Antoine, don't say 'avoid' because the information on this page still works.
The problem come from your setup and your ignorance about what you installed:
If you use XFCE ; your filebrowser is probably Thunar. This page doesn't offer a solution for Thunar.
It's clearly written it's for Nautilus and Nemo file browser.
( and you'll not find solution for Thunar Krita thumbnails, it doesn't exist as far as I know )

a

  Antoine - Reply

thought it would work for gnome-based file managers, i heard you're using manjaro xfce , so surely you must have .kra thumbnails working in xfce ,maybe youre using nemo in manjaro xfce

d

  David REVOY OP , - Reply

Yes, I'm using Nemo in Manjaro XFCE.
I opened a feature request for the Thunar team here https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11224
( Thunar team have his own thumbnailer, named Tumbler , not modular in my opinion )
Feel free to add your voice to this feature request ; maybe a developper will consider it more if I'm not alone to ask about it.

g

  Gary - Reply

Works great in Ubuntu 16.04, thanks!

f

  Francesca - Reply

Works perfectly in Linux Mint Cinnamon 18.2, thank you!

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