Google Picasa

Picasa is a powerful software that helps you easily locate, edit, and share all your pictures on your PC. Upon opening the program, it automatically scans your entire computer for every image file and sorts them into visual albums organized by date with folder names that are easy to recognize. The flexibility offered by Picasa allows you to drag and drop photos into different albums and create personalized labels to better organize your collection. This means that you will never lose track of your pictures again as Picasa ensures your images are always accessible and organized.

Editing images is made simple by Picasa as it brings advanced tools always within reach, making it easy to make one-click fixes or apply powerful effects. Additionally, sharing pictures becomes a breeze with Picasa, as you can choose between different mediums to showcase your images. Whether you want to email, print photos at home, make gift CDs, or post pictures directly to your blog, Picasa makes it easy to do so.

While everything about Picasa was wonderful, it was initially assumed that most cameras emulate storage devices, which turned out to be wrong. However, the software developers implemented libgphoto support, which allowed Picasa to support both common types of cameras. Two features that were left out of the Linux version were the ability to burn CD-ROMs and movie playback, as these are hard to support under Wine, but they are potentially fixable in future versions of the software.

Shipping commercial apps for Linux often presents a packaging challenge as you have to choose between RPM or Debian packages, or use a Windows-style installer. The Picasa for Linux team chose to implement all three packaging methods with the hope of satisfying everyone. The Windows-style installer was implemented using the open-source Loki installer, and a few patches were contributed back for that too.