Google releases Picasa for Linux

Google releases Picasa for Linux

Search engine giant Google has finally ported their popular photo application Picasa for the Linux platform.

Picasa was until now available only for the Windows platform and the new release has binaries available for most popular GNU/Linux distributions.

The company said that Picasa for Linux is in beta stage right now and lacks some advance functionality. However, it is ready to handle photo storage, organizing, and light photo editing on the Linux platform.

Picasa for Linux is being made with Wine and this has resulted in more than 100 patches released for the Wine from the search engine company. This benefits the open source community in many ways.

The company took the services of CodeWeavers to do much of the work needed to get Picasa to run on Linux with Wine. The Linux version of Picasa for now won’t perform the following functions:

CD Burning
TiVo Export
Support for languages other than English
Helloâ„¢ instant picture chat

Interestingly, the Google Picasa Linux page is currently locked for users outside the United States. This should be fixed in the coming days, as the company would be hoping for a wider audience to test the Linux port of Picasa out.