Image viewer for Linux

Software
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Hello,

I’ve recently hit by accident this article and it brought me to realizing how horribly slow is my image viewer … I use KDE and gwenview is default … I tried also digiKam/showfoto and words can hardly express how horrible the experience was especially regarding performance …

Is there some image viewer that you would recommend that would work reasonably fast especially with RAW files ?

I believe that the problem is not in my hardware … I have up-to-date Linux with 13th gen i7 cpu, with fast ssd drive and with plenty of memory …

jpegs are fine even with gwenview but raw images displaying (and it displayes embedded jpeg anyway and still does it horribly slow) is definitely not OK

thanks, ~d

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I don’t know about fast but I use xnview…it will load the raw, full or half size or raw with embedded preview…

image

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3

I’ve been happily using Geeqie.

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4

I’m also using geeqie and have for years. Most viewers will show the embedded jpeg, including geeqie.

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Pix: GitHub - linuxmint/pix: Image management application
Although developed for Mint, it is also (at least) in the repositories for Manjaro.

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I’m using Pix. I am satisfied with its performance. RAW files open very quickly. I have an Intel i5 9600KF processor and 32GB RAM.

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If you have too many viewers to choose from, shave off a few by requiring the viewer to be color managed. The above mentioned Geeqie passes that test. :slight_smile:

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I use both geeqie and fotocx, and both work well.

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XNView is color managed too

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Yes, digiKam starts terribly slowly - that’s probably the only drawback. It took me a long time to familiarize myself with this software. Every step you learn is worth it - digiKam is fantastically good. Coming from Windows, I was used to using XnView. I no longer need it. And if it has to be done quickly, then gThumb is also good. But I recommend everyone to familiarize themselves with digiKam, it is also excellent for viewing and managing videos. I can’t think of anything that digiKam can’t do.

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But is not FOSS. For those that use KDE Plasma, Gwenview is color managed. Being one of the core Plasma apps it should adhere to the Human Interface Guidelines. That’s something I value.

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Same here. And I do not think it is slow. To manage archives it’s incredibily fast.

Then I don’t if OP for “image viewer” means a simple tool to browse a folder of images or a complete DAM.

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Fast? Try feh. :dash: This is what I use as part of my processing/editing workflow — it loads and displays images almost instantly (even on old/modest hardware), it’s configurable, light-weight, and bloat-free. If dcraw is available, feh also supports RAW files and will display the embedded thumbnails. For me, it’s the perfect “do one job and do it well” solution.

If you need something slightly beefier, try sxiv — though I don’t think it will handle RAW files. I’ve not used this myself, but I’ve heard it’s a similar concept with a with a few extra (but useful) bells and whistles.

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I have been using gthumb. I’m not entirely happy with it but I haven’t got around to checking out other options on linux, so I must do that. The best image viewer and organiser I’ve found which runs only on windows and is no longer developed is Google Picasa. Google dumped it several years ago which is most unfortunate. It still runs but is starting to show its age.

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Well that’s the thing. It is not possible to set the profile inside gwenview. It completely relies on the system. As long as it cannot communicate with the wayland color management protocol, it’s uselesse in terms of color management.

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Does it have to if you’re running an X11 session?

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I haven’t yet found THE ideal image viewer (I’m on Linux) …

An opportunity to write a specification for developers on behalf of users?

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Nomacs is the best image viewer I’ve used, it’s really fast.

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Thanks to everybody for your input … After testing your recommendations (at least those FOSS) it seems to me, that I will use geeqie … It is rather “suboptimal” in many many aspects, especially regarding ergonomics but it indeed performance-wise literally wiped the floor with gwenview … did test (rough rudimentary test) … Traversed through 50 displayed RAW images from D850, loseless compressed and here is the result

geeqie - 37 seconds
gwenview - 2 minutes 5 seconds

this is quite difference … but the most horrible on geeqie are default keyboard shortcuts - they were obviously invented by somebody with cartoon-ish twisted mind who wanted to punish the world for … ? dunno, why, certainly for something very very gloomy what world did to him/her … I don’t even wanna know …

bad news is that it doesn’t seem that I can assign for instance cursor arrows to Next/Previous … I’ve found this question to be raised already with answer that geeqie doesn’t support assigning left/right arrows … :smiley: … for the sake of the God, what so bad could world do to the poor soul who coded that :frowning: :frowning:

geeqie is certainly superfast but horrible ergonomics drive me away of it sadly …

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edit: horrible, horrible ergonomics … I’ve never seen something so awful … I even cannot assign ctrl+N combo … It doesn’t allow assigning combos like this … from my image viewer I would want following features

right/left arrow - Next/Previous
ctrl+N - zoom level, eg ctrl+0 == zoom 100% (can be done with “z”, why ??? :D)
numbers - some rating

anyway … this is rant, please disregard … it’s the matter of to get used on it … like with (almost) anything else