Newbie - Picasa Alternative (scans hard-disk for images)..?

[semile]

Is there a program that can automatically scan hard-drive for images & display them in some sort of 'manager' WITHOUT having to keep track & add folders/ image files manually?

If not, please still recommend a decent 'manager' for images... more for viewing than editing...

Thanks.

[atreyu]

Hello and welcome!

I have not used an apps that scan my hard drive looking for images. For that, I'd just a find command to generate a list of them, then open the ones I wanted in an image viewer, e.g.:

find / -type f -iname '*.bmp' -o -iname '*.png' -o -iname '*.jpg' 1 > /tmp/pix.txt

that will take some time to run, but when done, you'll have a list of files in /tmp/pix.txt. you'd want to run it as root if you want to search all directories. obviously, it only covers the files by the extensions listed (case-insensitive) - just add others using -o -iname '*.blah', as needed. of course, any mis-named image file (e.g., "file.avi") which seems like a movie file, but is really an image file, would be missed. For that, you could use the file command to interrogate the file type.

I prefer geeqie as a light-weight image viewer. It succeeded gqview, which was also an unfortunate name for an app. I also use eog (Eye of Gnome) and gthumb, both GNOME apps, because they integrate nicely with the DE.

For editing, there is GIMP and no other.