How do I put back Gimp scripts, brushes, fonts etc after installing 11.10?

Question

I have installed Ubuntu 11.10 earlier today. Have to say that it does take quite some getting used to after using Windows 7 but it looks great and I think I'm getting the feel for it. Except for a couple of issues.

For example: I am an experienced GIMP user, and even make money with it. I had a lot of additional scripts/brushes/fonts/etc added to my GIMP when using Windows 7. Before switching OS I made a backup of those files on my external drive. Now I want to put those back into the GIMP installation in Ubuntu.

How do I go about this? I have located the GIMP entry in the 'share' folder, but am not allowed to copy any files to it, the system says I'm not the 'root'. I'm probably doing it wrong; Ubuntu is a whole other world than Windows.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance!

EDIT: In general, I might also ask the following question, which will help me with the above and just about all my other issues: - Where are my programs located? In other words: What is in Ubuntu, what 'program files' is in Windows? And are there differences between the two? Can you edit files in Ubuntu like you can in Windows?

Why I'm asking this, is: a lot of stuff you can download from the web comes with a description similar to "download this and put the file in .../.../.../..." Since a lot of programs do not run on Ubuntu, placing in the files manually is the only remaining way to do it, like with the GIMP utilities. Or is there another way?

Answer 1

I've written an article on wikihow on how to do this, so check it out here.

About the error, you would have to copy the files in with a sudo command, but I wouldn't recommend it. Using the configuration folders in you home directory doesn't require root permissions, and if you mess things up the worst that can happen is that you would need to create a new user account. Messing with the global settings is dangerous; only use them if absolutely necessary.

Programs (at least the scripts that start the programs) are located in /usr/bin, I think, but some are in /opt, too.

I'm not sure how familiar you are to Linux, but there really isn't really a "program files" folder in the same sense that Windows has. All settings are mostly done in separate configuration folders. You will have to know where to put each one.

Have fun with Ubuntu! It's a great OS, but definitely different from Windows.

Answer 2

The best way to go about this is to copy your scripts, brushes and fonts to the Gimp folder in your home directory, where only you can use them. Adding them to the Share directory makes them available to all users, but is more problematic.

To add them to your home directory, open your home folder, it looks like this in the launcher:

Press CTRL+H to show hidden files, and open your '.gimp-2.6'folder, the sub-folders you need are in here. Copy the backed up files to their corresponding folders and restart Gimp, you should be good to go.

To the second part of your question, the best way to add programs to Ubuntu is to just use the Software Center. It's built-in to Ubuntu and the programs contained are known to be safe to install. Installing is automatic, you don't need to fuss with directories or files, everything is one click install.