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- Hacker News
- How much in tokens/Claude subs would it cost to make a paint.net open source clone?
Seems like the kind of software that with enough tokens an agent would be able to create from scratch autonomously (because you have a clear goal and reference)
I'd guess with 5 max subs running fable 5.1 almost non stop it should be doable in a couple of weeks.
by redox99 - I think it's roughly possible for any piece of software. I think the problem would be how long it would take to polish it afterwards. I think it would be an interesting experiment to run an AI only open source project though. Not sure cloning another paint program is really worth the effort however.by keithnz
- The author says it's about 700k LoC that he's worked on for 20 years.[1] I don't know how many tokens that arrives at, but that seems non-trivial.by jadar
- Oh god YES! I paid for paint.net on Windows because it's the only software I find reasonably simple AND reasonably advanced, covering all my usage.
The lack of a linux version was a huge disappointment, especially since most of my computers are switching to windows (I have 2 more on windows and was evaluating moving one of the two over!)
- Yes! This is by far the number one program I've missed since I left Windows years ago. GIMP is so unfriendly, krita is for drawing, pinta is a very shallow clone that only just stopped crashing a few months ago. Paint.net is just better in every way.by 3836293648
- The full thread[0] about how it runs on Wine is quite interesting:
> 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.
[0]: https://forums.paint.net/topic/134563-%F0%9F%8D%B7-extremely...
by judah - How can one claim clean room if developed by a model? “Don’t use stolen code, yo”?by 0x1d7
- Why is Direct2D so hard to implement in Wine?by edflsafoiewq
- Unlikely to see wide distribution on Linux given the licenseby JamesCoyne
- The license allows redistribution so I don't think it would be prohibitive to it being distributed.by charcircuit
- This is via Wine, so presumably it should also run on Macs now.
Paint.net is the only thing I miss from my days on Windows machines, so super excited about this!
by yodon - I also miss paint.net on Mac. Pinta gets pretty close though: https://www.pinta-project.com/by fletchowns
- Paint.net used to be an open source collaboration project by Rick Brewster, a Microsoft Employee and the students at the University of Washington. Today it is a private closed source project accepting donations, and still headed by Rick Brewster.by nashashmi
- Don't forget that it actively spies on the user! Say no to telemetry.by gguingff
- Washington State University not University of Washingtonby Readerium
- I guess more digital art options on Linux are always good, but that aside, is there even a good reason to use it when something like Krita exists? It's always worked flawlessly on my linux machine (Mint).by vunderba
- I know nothing about writing an image editor or graphics programming but maybe someone here can fill me in - would it be more or less difficult ("would it take more or less tokens" is probably the right question to ask these days) to replace the Windows-specific APIs with cross-platform alternatives (I guess Skia instead of Direct2D and something like Avalonia or Uno instead of Win32-based UI?) instead of re-implementing Direct2D?by tkot
- Seems that it is doable:
https://github.com/PixiEditor/PixiEditor
However, I think without having the burden of legacy code and APIs it is a bit easier to accomplish. Probably paint.net has been targeting Windows platforms from the beginning and making it "Linux compatible" has not been a big effort but more a side effect of fixing some stuff and wine generally being awesome.
I personally would love to see commercial editors like Affinity Studio targeting Linux. While solutions like Krita and Gimp are great, it did not really click for me. I'm using Gimp, but somehow I often find myself seeking for how to do easy tasks that should be more intuitive.
by sandreas - Here is the source code of the last open source (MIT) release from 2008
Wonder if it can be built for modern Linux
https://web.archive.org/web/20080000000000*/http://www.dotpd...
by haunter - > Wonder if it can be built for modern Linux
I think the question nowadays would be "What's the least amount of tokens I could use for making this build on modern Linux?", with any amount of tokens, there isn't much you couldn't do with enough time.
- Pinta is the continuation of this source, it already exists.by gertop
- Miguel de Icaza took that code and got it running on Mono back in the day, and a few months ago for kicks I compiled it and it still runs. Quite buggy though.by superdisk
- Apparently the author got a surprising amount of backlash on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/rickbrew.bsky.social/post/3muiv4phe...by tech234a
- Not surprising. Bluesky is full of wannabe programmers who love talking down to actual developers.by jhack
- > Alright everyone, message received. I was not expecting this response, I honestly had no idea before I made the post
The source got deleted, what is the backlash even about? People don't like .net software running on Linux?
> Like I said, the code is experimental. A proof of concept showing that PDN-on-WINE is possible. It's not finished. I can literally just delete it. It won't be part of the next build.
This almost sounds like sarcasm and a reference to the whole "The Bun-rewritten-in-Rust branch is just a prototype and probably means nothing" Tweet that initially made the frontpage when it. But I think it's in earnest, just very similar to how I remember that Tweet I suppose.
- There’s nothing surprising about Bluesky’s audience being toxic to any mention of AI. It’s the dogma over there and anyone who doesn’t agree has long left or never joined.by weiran
- Yeah, mod team reacted accordingly. The site needs automated dogpiling detection and intervention. It's a problem.by pfraze
- What is wrong with people?! Geez.by LetMeLogin
- It looks like the original post was removed, but there are some screenshots going around (unfortunately X doesn't let you view full-size unless you're logged in): https://x.com/ChrisCroy/status/2094867317163540937by mortenjorck
- The backlash is so completely unwarranted. This is a piece of free software where the creator is making it easier to use on free software platforms. If you don't want PDN on Linux because you hate AI no matter what, then don't use it. Don't rage attack the creator so that others can't use PDN.
Thanks Rick Brewster! I love PDN. It isn't as capable as Photoshop, but it isn't a rental, and it does 99% of what I need it to do. I've even bought it on the Microsoft Store just to support it.
by pseudosavant