I've lost the email asking for this, but it's probably useful to some of you. The following are details of how I installed Gimp 1.2.1 on SuSE 6.4 with default settings after reinstalling on a new disk and upgrading to kernel 2.4.2. This should be easier under 7.1. JDL Gimp Installation ================= 1. Make sure the following packages are installed so that gimp will compile. libtool (d, building shared libraries), gettext (d, native language support), xdevel (x, building gtk+), libmpeg (gra, building gimp), indent (d, gimp-help) imlibdev (gra, gimp-help), orbitdev (d, gimp-help) aalibdev(d, gimpbuild). Get updates (SuSE 6.4) for libjpeg.rpm. 2. Get tar.gz files from www.gimp.org, www.gtk.org. The specific ones I use are gimp-1.2.1.tar.bz2, gimp-data-extras-1.2.0.tar.bz2, glib-1.2.8.tar.gz, gtk+1.2.8.tar.gz Put these in /usr/src and extract folders using tar Ixvf file.tar.bz2 or tar zxvf file.tar.gz. You need at least versions 1.2.8 of glib and gtk+ for gimp-2.1. 3. Install glib. The specific method I used is: cd /usr/src/glib-1.2.8/ CFLAGS="-O2 -march=i686" ./configure --prefix=/usr make make install-strip omit or change -march=i686 if you don't have an i686 processor. make will complain loudly if you don't and you just rerun ./configure with the right flags. My most common mistake is to use -mv8 (a sparc setting) instead. Don't try to compile with the flag -malign=double: gimp will compile, but won't be able to work with jpeg files. The libjpeg source won't compile properly with -malign=double; so it's probably best to avoid this flag. The default insatllation directories are /usr/local. The --prefix option puts the library in the SuSE default location. In my case there is a performance issue because /usr and /usr/lib are on separate disks. You can use make install instead of make install-strip. Make install strip just removes debugging information. I didn't see any -g flags during the build; so there probably wasn't any debugging information to remove. 4. Install gtk+ in the same way as glib: cd /usr/src/gtk+-1.2.8/ CFLAGS="-O2 -march=i686" ./configure --prefix=/usr --with-xinput=xfree make make install-strip The --with-xinput=xfree is only needed if (as I do) you want support for a Wacom graphics tablet. 5. Install gimp. The specific method I used is: cd /usr/src/gimp-1.2.1/ CFLAGS="-O2 -march=i686" ./configure --prefix=/usr --enable-nls --with-python make make install-strip You can install a fully working gimp without the last two flags. 6. Install gimp-data extras. cd /usr/src/gimp-data-extras-1.2.0/ CFLAGS="-O2 -march=i686" ./configure --prefix=/usr make make install-strip