I see they finally got the domain name paint.net. They used to be at getpaint.net, and the paint company that owned paint.net had a link saying something like 'if you are looking for the graphics software, go to getpaint.net'.
I know nothing about writing an image editor or graphics programming but maybe someone here can fill me in - would it be more or less difficult ("would it take more or less tokens" is probably the right question to ask these days) to replace the Windows-specific APIs with cross-platform alternatives (I guess Skia instead of Direct2D and something like Avalonia or Uno instead of Win32-based UI?) instead of re-implementing Direct2D?
The backlash is so completely unwarranted. This is a piece of free software where the creator is making it easier to use on free software platforms. If you don't want PDN on Linux because you hate AI no matter what, then don't use it. Don't rage attack the creator so that others can't use PDN.
Thanks Rick Brewster! I love PDN. It isn't as capable as Photoshop, but it isn't a rental, and it does 99% of what I need it to do. I've even bought it on the Microsoft Store just to support it.
It looks like the original post was removed, but there are some screenshots going around (unfortunately X doesn't let you view full-size unless you're logged in): https://x.com/ChrisCroy/status/2094867317163540937
Outside of tech communities like HN, I see anti-AI rhetoric everywhere. A very large number of humans see AI as a purely evil and parasitic thing, no matter how it’s used. It’s an especially common view among artists and young people.
Whether or not you agree about AI, when you’re communicating to a wider audience, you have to read the room.
I honestly suspect that if he said he was using OpenAI instead, the results would be completely different. Ever since the DOD thing, pretty much every sub, thread, or reference to Claude, has resulted in vitriol. It mostly materializes as one-line comments and harassment.
What I noticed in this is that literally every single poster has a cartoon avatar. I assume they farm their karma in threads related to a game, movie, show, etc.
Bluesky is pretty decent and has features that I like over X, but much of its user base are from the Great Xodus (pardon the pun): people who frame their switch to Bluesky as some kind of boycott of X, ie, a bunch of moralists. They didn't leave X because it's a hellscape of trashing and toxicity, no, they left because the politics changed. And so Bluesky is now saturated with people who are very opinionated, very loud about it, and very willing to engage in trashing.
> Alright everyone, message received. I was not expecting this response, I honestly had no idea before I made the post
The source got deleted, what is the backlash even about? People don't like .net software running on Linux?
> Like I said, the code is experimental. A proof of concept showing that PDN-on-WINE is possible. It's not finished. I can literally just delete it. It won't be part of the next build.
This almost sounds like sarcasm and a reference to the whole "The Bun-rewritten-in-Rust branch is just a prototype and probably means nothing" Tweet that initially made the frontpage when it. But I think it's in earnest, just very similar to how I remember that Tweet I suppose.
>Paint .NET-on-WINE has never been possible because of Direct2D, which WINE has really struggled with (for good reasons).
>So like ... why not reimplement Direct2D-in-Paint .NET? Remove the dependency on WINE completely. Clean room reverse engineering ...
>Thanks to Claude Code, it's now a reality. More story in the link above.
>It's buggy and slow, but real progress is being made.
>And I have no idea when/if this will be "production ready" or "supported" or even "good enough." Maybe next year, maybe next month, maybe 2035.
>Claude made more progress on this in 3 weeks than we've seen in the 12 years since PDN started using Direct2D in 2014.
>This isn't to talk down to the WINE folks, btw. Direct2D has a really complicated effects system, and probably only PDN really uses it, so the ROI was very low.
>AI doesn't care. And it doesn't get tired. And this is the perfect task for it: it already has the design (D2D's docs and API), and it already has a known-good implementation of it and an app to test against and bang its head against.
>So that's what it did: it banged its head against d2d1.dll and paintdotnet.exe for about 3 weeks until it was able to boot up PDN. In WINE. For real.
>Here's PDN on .NET 10 win-x64, in WINE 11.14-dev, on Ubuntu, in WSL2, on Windows 11. And yes it works on real Linux too.
That's not true. The Bluesky team are themselves pretty pro-AI and open about how LLMs are used to build Bluesky and are necessary for moderation.
Lots of SWEs on Bluesky (e.g. me) use LLMs a lot and follow other people who do too.
On the other hand, artists and writers on there generally hate AI and will gladly take time out of their day to loudly gang up on anyone they see as betraying them.
I think they just meant it as "Bluesky the community" rather than "Bluesky Social, PBC employees". E.g. just like "HN loves corrections" (hello!) refers to the HN community and "Reddit discusses the title" the same.
There is a very vocal section of the userbase who are vehemently anti-AI. Blocklists help avoid them (using them or being on them). However there is also a really good AI community on there. It's generally a lot less commercially-focused than on Twitter, for better and worse. It helps that atproto itself is really good for agents. They know how to use it, and the data is all open and accessible. Lots of people have been experimenting with agents that "live" on Bluesky, some of which are really interesting.
Why not just ignore them? Most of them are probably not Paint.net users anyway. Why listening to some randos most of who wouldn't be using your software anyway.
I wonder if we will ever get AI-optimized language sets, ie code instructions given specifically to AI agents to develop code for a JIT interpreter. This gives the same results each and every time the instruction to AI is given no matter the version of LLM used.
We're in a reply chain discussing a mob of digital artists exercising verbal violence against a digital painting software author who used LLM to assist with the code. This is literally an analogous situation.
On the contrary I think that's an apt comparison. Look up the history of e.g. the Luddites. This isn't the first time this sort of thing has happened in human history.
Miguel de Icaza took that code and got it running on Mono back in the day, and a few months ago for kicks I compiled it and it still runs. Quite buggy though.
I think the question nowadays would be "What's the least amount of tokens I could use for making this build on modern Linux?", with any amount of tokens, there isn't much you couldn't do with enough time.
Note Pinta was only ever a port of the engine, Pinta's UI is a from-scratch Gtk# clone. Given the compelling reason to use Paint.NET was arguably the UI, that's a pretty big drawback.
Paint.Net was only really open source entirely from 2004-2007 and partially from 2007-2009 (engine only, not the UI for the latter part).
My experience: Pinta is an inferior Paint.NET . It's about the same level of complexity, but everything is just like... 60-85% as good.
Krita is a heavier program, but has a similar level of polish. You might not use half the features, but Krita's what I'd suggest for anyone wanting an open source alternative to Paint.net
Paint.net used to be an open source collaboration project by Rick Brewster, a Microsoft Employee and the students at the University of Washington. Today it is a private closed source project accepting donations, and still headed by Rick Brewster.
I guess more digital art options on Linux are always good, but that aside, is there even a good reason to use it when something like Krita exists? It's always worked flawlessly on my linux machine (Mint).
Very different software. Paint.NET is mostly a composition/annotation tool oriented towards simplicity and speed, Krita revolves around digital painting.
I can see that. I wish Pixelmator (before it got bought up by Apple) had been ported over to Linux. That's been the closest lightweight super-intuitive alternative to Paint.net I've ever messed around with.
Paint.net is my go-to image editing software. I'm not a digital artist or professional photographer, I just need to downsize/crop/adjust the occasional image. I don't need the kitchen sink. Regular MS Paint is annoyingly basic and Krita, GIMP, et al., are too much UI-wise. That said, I use Linux daily but not for images so not sure if there is a Paint.net analog on Linux already.
Back when I was still on Windows(XP days), I made heavy use of Paint.net. Given Microsoft’s penchant for gobbling up smaller companies, I was always a bit surprised that they never bought the company and integrated paint.net as the built-in OS replacement for the original MS Paint.
Yes!
This is by far the number one program I've missed since I left Windows years ago. GIMP is so unfriendly, krita is for drawing, pinta is a very shallow clone that only just stopped crashing a few months ago. Paint.net is just better in every way.
The full thread[0] about how it runs on Wine is quite interesting:
> Direct2D has always been the biggest hurdle for Paint.NET on WINE, and it's clear that it will never be completed enough for Paint.NET's use. And I can't just "disable" the use of Direct2D. So, instead, Paint.NET now has an internal, from-scratch, clean-room reverse-engineered rewrite of Direct2D that it uses on WINE (triggered by using /wine). It lives in PaintDotNet.Windows.Direct2D1.Managed.dll. This was written by our good friend Claude, without whom this would NOT have been possible and would NEVER have happened.
> Most of this code is, as they say, "vibe coded." By that I mean that it has not been thoroughly reviewed, it's more "trust me bro" style. I cannot possibly review 180,000 lines of code, it's just way way way too much. For reference, the rest of Paint.NET is about 700,000 lines of code and I've been working on it for over 20 years. I did thoroughly review any code that had to be changed or added elsewhere in the Paint.NET code base (refactoring and integration points, etc.). Over time I do hope that more of this code will be vetted by real humans and also by more advanced AI models.
I'm not the Paint.NET developer (just a happy user of that software), but to me the moral logic would go something like this:
If Anthropic can absorb proprietary or GPL code into their models, which they rent usage of for tens of billions of dollars in revenue, and successfully claim that this violates no licenses, then I can also consider the output of those models "clean" for purposes of my software I give away for free.
It's nice to have more options, so far I've managed to handle most of my Linux graphics needs with https://www.photopea.com - amazing broad support of document image formats, full-featured edits and all running in the browser.
How much in tokens/Claude subs would it cost to make a paint.net open source clone?
Seems like the kind of software that with enough tokens an agent would be able to create from scratch autonomously (because you have a clear goal and reference)
I'd guess with 5 max subs running fable 5.1 almost non stop it should be doable in a couple of weeks.
I think it's roughly possible for any piece of software. I think the problem would be how long it would take to polish it afterwards. I think it would be an interesting experiment to run an AI only open source project though. Not sure cloning another paint program is really worth the effort however.
700k LoC of human written code is probably like 2M LoC of LLM "slop". That's probably around 8M tokens. Assuming a single fable agent that one shots the new source code at 30 tok/s, that's 74 hours. Of course it needs wayyy more tokens because it wouldn't one shot it, plus the reasoning tokens. Generation speed would be faster because you'd have many simultaneous agents though.
Bun rewrite took 6 days of coding and was a similar number of LoC, so I think a couple of weeks is definitely reasonable, although you probably need more than 5 Claude subs.
It's way more than 8M tokens. That might be around the amount of the raw output, but there's going to be tons of tool calls, back and forth... it's probably more like 100M+ tokens.
> Bun rewrite took 6 days of coding and was a similar number of LoC, so I think a couple of weeks is definitely reasonable, although you probably need more than 5 Claude subs.
Bun had numerous standardized and extensive javascript test suites to validate the slop code against. I doubt paint.net has test coverage anywhere near that complete, and without it using LLMs to rewrite something is a much larger risk.
Besides which, Bun claims the rewrite took 6 days but they took months after that to finish hammering out the bugs and actually ship, so I don't really buy the original price tag or timeline on their rewrite.
Paint.net was originally MIT licensed but the author closed its source because people did not give him credit. Note: The MIT license does not require credit.
Paint.net likely still benefits from the announcement of "Open Source Alternative To Microsoft Paint" long after switching to a proprietary license, which I find more dubious than using MIT-licensed code without giving credit to the author.
Also I rather doubt a "clean-room reverse-engineered rewrite of Direct2D" can be "written by our good friend Claude, without whom this would NOT have been possible"?
The MIT notice starts with “Copyright (c) <year> <copyright holders>”, and who uses the code must include that line in any derived work.
> Also I rather doubt
Do you doubt Claude's rewrite can be defined as “clean room” (I also do)? Or that Claude is able to rewrite it? Or that it would not have been possible otherwise?
This feels like a distinction without a difference. Would you say a Python script/Java utility doesn't "run on Linux" because you need Python/Java installed?
paint.net is amazing for basic png editing, I've dreamed of this day. It'a the only thing I miss from Windows. I don't understand the slashback at all.
I see they finally got the domain name paint.net. They used to be at getpaint.net, and the paint company that owned paint.net had a link saying something like 'if you are looking for the graphics software, go to getpaint.net'.
As someone who went to paint.net as a child this is great news!
I know nothing about writing an image editor or graphics programming but maybe someone here can fill me in - would it be more or less difficult ("would it take more or less tokens" is probably the right question to ask these days) to replace the Windows-specific APIs with cross-platform alternatives (I guess Skia instead of Direct2D and something like Avalonia or Uno instead of Win32-based UI?) instead of re-implementing Direct2D?
Apparently the author got a surprising amount of backlash on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/rickbrew.bsky.social/post/3muiv4phe...
The backlash is so completely unwarranted. This is a piece of free software where the creator is making it easier to use on free software platforms. If you don't want PDN on Linux because you hate AI no matter what, then don't use it. Don't rage attack the creator so that others can't use PDN.
Thanks Rick Brewster! I love PDN. It isn't as capable as Photoshop, but it isn't a rental, and it does 99% of what I need it to do. I've even bought it on the Microsoft Store just to support it.
It looks like the original post was removed, but there are some screenshots going around (unfortunately X doesn't let you view full-size unless you're logged in): https://x.com/ChrisCroy/status/2094867317163540937
There’s nothing surprising or confusing here.
Outside of tech communities like HN, I see anti-AI rhetoric everywhere. A very large number of humans see AI as a purely evil and parasitic thing, no matter how it’s used. It’s an especially common view among artists and young people.
Whether or not you agree about AI, when you’re communicating to a wider audience, you have to read the room.
It's BlueSky lol. If your way to 'read the room' is to read BlueSky replies then you're already in a pretty doomed position.
Does every single one of these posters have a cartoon avatar? What's going on here?
Those responses are disgusting. I bet you every one of these individuals criticised X for being toxic.
What the hell is going on with those people (or bots?)?
Bluesky is a biker bar with an askew "safe space" sign awkwardly taped to the door.
Do not blame the bikers, they usually are very friendly people. :-)
[dead]
I honestly suspect that if he said he was using OpenAI instead, the results would be completely different. Ever since the DOD thing, pretty much every sub, thread, or reference to Claude, has resulted in vitriol. It mostly materializes as one-line comments and harassment.
What I noticed in this is that literally every single poster has a cartoon avatar. I assume they farm their karma in threads related to a game, movie, show, etc.
[dead]
You can use a nitter instance: https://x.n0g.xyz/ChrisCroy/status/2094867317163540937
Using a domain that resembles a racial slur isn't a good look.
I must be naive, but how does that resemble?
I'm guessing the n0g part. I would never have thought that if someone hadn't said it. I'd have thought of "egg nog" long before a racial slur.
he probably means the nitter part, not the literal domain. never occurred to me before tho.
Call me crazy, but for me the next stop after nitter is knitter, not the other thing.
Forgive my lack of familiarity with racial slurs, but what part of that resembles a racial slur?
What is wrong with people?! Geez.
for real, improving free open source software is one of the positives of AI
Paint.net is closed source
People say X is toxic, but Bluesky really is on another level
This in no way diminishes the toxicity of X
I'd say overall bluesky is better but boy howdy is it differently stupid sometimes.
Bluesky is pretty decent and has features that I like over X, but much of its user base are from the Great Xodus (pardon the pun): people who frame their switch to Bluesky as some kind of boycott of X, ie, a bunch of moralists. They didn't leave X because it's a hellscape of trashing and toxicity, no, they left because the politics changed. And so Bluesky is now saturated with people who are very opinionated, very loud about it, and very willing to engage in trashing.
Exile usually connotes being forced out from a place.
The distinction is important because no one asked them to leave.
I originally had "self exiles" but thought the Xile pun was funnier :P
"Xodus"!
Stealing that
[flagged]
> Alright everyone, message received. I was not expecting this response, I honestly had no idea before I made the post
The source got deleted, what is the backlash even about? People don't like .net software running on Linux?
> Like I said, the code is experimental. A proof of concept showing that PDN-on-WINE is possible. It's not finished. I can literally just delete it. It won't be part of the next build.
This almost sounds like sarcasm and a reference to the whole "The Bun-rewritten-in-Rust branch is just a prototype and probably means nothing" Tweet that initially made the frontpage when it. But I think it's in earnest, just very similar to how I remember that Tweet I suppose.
>The source got deleted, what is the backlash even about?
It's Bluesky, they hate AI so the mob bullied him to delete the posts
https://web.archive.org/web/20260901203707/https://bsky.app/...
>Paint .NET-on-WINE has never been possible because of Direct2D, which WINE has really struggled with (for good reasons).
>So like ... why not reimplement Direct2D-in-Paint .NET? Remove the dependency on WINE completely. Clean room reverse engineering ...
>Thanks to Claude Code, it's now a reality. More story in the link above.
>It's buggy and slow, but real progress is being made.
>And I have no idea when/if this will be "production ready" or "supported" or even "good enough." Maybe next year, maybe next month, maybe 2035.
>Claude made more progress on this in 3 weeks than we've seen in the 12 years since PDN started using Direct2D in 2014.
>This isn't to talk down to the WINE folks, btw. Direct2D has a really complicated effects system, and probably only PDN really uses it, so the ROI was very low.
>AI doesn't care. And it doesn't get tired. And this is the perfect task for it: it already has the design (D2D's docs and API), and it already has a known-good implementation of it and an app to test against and bang its head against.
>So that's what it did: it banged its head against d2d1.dll and paintdotnet.exe for about 3 weeks until it was able to boot up PDN. In WINE. For real.
>Here's PDN on .NET 10 win-x64, in WINE 11.14-dev, on Ubuntu, in WSL2, on Windows 11. And yes it works on real Linux too.
> It's Bluesky, they hate AI
That's not true. The Bluesky team are themselves pretty pro-AI and open about how LLMs are used to build Bluesky and are necessary for moderation.
Lots of SWEs on Bluesky (e.g. me) use LLMs a lot and follow other people who do too.
On the other hand, artists and writers on there generally hate AI and will gladly take time out of their day to loudly gang up on anyone they see as betraying them.
Same feeling as well. Bluesky is also a place amenable to bots.
I think they just meant it as "Bluesky the community" rather than "Bluesky Social, PBC employees". E.g. just like "HN loves corrections" (hello!) refers to the HN community and "Reddit discusses the title" the same.
> It's Bluesky, they hate AI
There is a very vocal section of the userbase who are vehemently anti-AI. Blocklists help avoid them (using them or being on them). However there is also a really good AI community on there. It's generally a lot less commercially-focused than on Twitter, for better and worse. It helps that atproto itself is really good for agents. They know how to use it, and the data is all open and accessible. Lots of people have been experimenting with agents that "live" on Bluesky, some of which are really interesting.
> the mob bullied him to delete the posts
Why not just ignore them? Most of them are probably not Paint.net users anyway. Why listening to some randos most of who wouldn't be using your software anyway.
I wonder if we will ever get AI-optimized language sets, ie code instructions given specifically to AI agents to develop code for a JIT interpreter. This gives the same results each and every time the instruction to AI is given no matter the version of LLM used.
I believe you want compilers?
Use of Claude Code for an application used by artists. Just a fundamental misalignment of expectations.
Makes no sense. I don't see physical artists being upset that their pencils were manufactured in a factory instead of hand made.
That has absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand.
We're in a reply chain discussing a mob of digital artists exercising verbal violence against a digital painting software author who used LLM to assist with the code. This is literally an analogous situation.
On the contrary I think that's an apt comparison. Look up the history of e.g. the Luddites. This isn't the first time this sort of thing has happened in human history.
Not surprising. Bluesky is full of wannabe programmers who love talking down to actual developers.
Here is the source code of the last open source (MIT) release from 2008
Wonder if it can be built for modern Linux
https://web.archive.org/web/20080000000000*/http://www.dotpd...
Miguel de Icaza took that code and got it running on Mono back in the day, and a few months ago for kicks I compiled it and it still runs. Quite buggy though.
> Wonder if it can be built for modern Linux
I think the question nowadays would be "What's the least amount of tokens I could use for making this build on modern Linux?", with any amount of tokens, there isn't much you couldn't do with enough time.
Pinta is the continuation of this source, it already exists.
Note Pinta was only ever a port of the engine, Pinta's UI is a from-scratch Gtk# clone. Given the compelling reason to use Paint.NET was arguably the UI, that's a pretty big drawback.
The UI is pretty similar. It's very intuitive for someone used to Paint.NET. Pinta definitely satisfies my desire for Paint.NET on Linux.
I didn't realize Paint.net was closed-source now. What's the best alternative, Pinta?
It's been closed source for 16+ years. Some background:
* https://blog.paint.net/2007/12/04/freeware-authors-beware-of...
* https://blog.paint.net/2009/11/06/a-new-license-for-paintnet...
> The biggest problem was that, even though these were clearly unethical and deplorable actions, the MIT License permitted all of it.
Seriously? Why not go GPL then?
Pinta is obviously not as capable, but yeah, it's by far the most usable general-purpose photo editor on Linux that I've found.
Paint.Net was only really open source entirely from 2004-2007 and partially from 2007-2009 (engine only, not the UI for the latter part).
My experience: Pinta is an inferior Paint.NET . It's about the same level of complexity, but everything is just like... 60-85% as good.
Krita is a heavier program, but has a similar level of polish. You might not use half the features, but Krita's what I'd suggest for anyone wanting an open source alternative to Paint.net
Pinta is based on an old Paint.net code
Paint.net used to be an open source collaboration project by Rick Brewster, a Microsoft Employee and the students at the University of Washington. Today it is a private closed source project accepting donations, and still headed by Rick Brewster.
I guess more digital art options on Linux are always good, but that aside, is there even a good reason to use it when something like Krita exists? It's always worked flawlessly on my linux machine (Mint).
https://github.com/kde/krita
Very different software. Paint.NET is mostly a composition/annotation tool oriented towards simplicity and speed, Krita revolves around digital painting.
I use Krita, but I miss Paint.NET
It’s lighter, simpler, and faster with a much more intuitive UX. for basic image manipulation tasks it’s awesome.
For creation of art I’d use Krita, it is more feature complete. But if Paint.NET appeared on Linux, I’d use it in a heartbeat.
Paint.NET is closer to Gimp, but usable.
I can see that. I wish Pixelmator (before it got bought up by Apple) had been ported over to Linux. That's been the closest lightweight super-intuitive alternative to Paint.net I've ever messed around with.
Paint.net is my go-to image editing software. I'm not a digital artist or professional photographer, I just need to downsize/crop/adjust the occasional image. I don't need the kitchen sink. Regular MS Paint is annoyingly basic and Krita, GIMP, et al., are too much UI-wise. That said, I use Linux daily but not for images so not sure if there is a Paint.net analog on Linux already.
Back when I was still on Windows(XP days), I made heavy use of Paint.net. Given Microsoft’s penchant for gobbling up smaller companies, I was always a bit surprised that they never bought the company and integrated paint.net as the built-in OS replacement for the original MS Paint.
I'd reverse the question and ask is there any reason to continue developing in .NET and windows-only languages when windows allows for WSL apps.
Washington State University not University of Washington
Don't forget that it actively spies on the user! Say no to telemetry.
This is via Wine, so presumably it should also run on Macs now.
Paint.net is the only thing I miss from my days on Windows machines, so super excited about this!
I also miss paint.net on Mac. Pinta gets pretty close though: https://www.pinta-project.com/
Unlikely to see wide distribution on Linux given the license
The license allows redistribution so I don't think it would be prohibitive to it being distributed.
Paint.net itself is still not open-source, so no distro will distribute it.
If this shin even becomes "good enough" then I'm sure it will appear in the AUR and flathhub, however.
Lots of distros distribute nonfree software.
Yes! This is by far the number one program I've missed since I left Windows years ago. GIMP is so unfriendly, krita is for drawing, pinta is a very shallow clone that only just stopped crashing a few months ago. Paint.net is just better in every way.
The full thread[0] about how it runs on Wine is quite interesting:
> Direct2D has always been the biggest hurdle for Paint.NET on WINE, and it's clear that it will never be completed enough for Paint.NET's use. And I can't just "disable" the use of Direct2D. So, instead, Paint.NET now has an internal, from-scratch, clean-room reverse-engineered rewrite of Direct2D that it uses on WINE (triggered by using /wine). It lives in PaintDotNet.Windows.Direct2D1.Managed.dll. This was written by our good friend Claude, without whom this would NOT have been possible and would NEVER have happened.
> Most of this code is, as they say, "vibe coded." By that I mean that it has not been thoroughly reviewed, it's more "trust me bro" style. I cannot possibly review 180,000 lines of code, it's just way way way too much. For reference, the rest of Paint.NET is about 700,000 lines of code and I've been working on it for over 20 years. I did thoroughly review any code that had to be changed or added elsewhere in the Paint.NET code base (refactoring and integration points, etc.). Over time I do hope that more of this code will be vetted by real humans and also by more advanced AI models.
[0]: https://forums.paint.net/topic/134563-%F0%9F%8D%B7-extremely...
How can one claim clean room if developed by a model? “Don’t use stolen code, yo”?
I'm not the Paint.NET developer (just a happy user of that software), but to me the moral logic would go something like this:
If Anthropic can absorb proprietary or GPL code into their models, which they rent usage of for tens of billions of dollars in revenue, and successfully claim that this violates no licenses, then I can also consider the output of those models "clean" for purposes of my software I give away for free.
It's nice to have more options, so far I've managed to handle most of my Linux graphics needs with https://www.photopea.com - amazing broad support of document image formats, full-featured edits and all running in the browser.
How much in tokens/Claude subs would it cost to make a paint.net open source clone?
Seems like the kind of software that with enough tokens an agent would be able to create from scratch autonomously (because you have a clear goal and reference)
I'd guess with 5 max subs running fable 5.1 almost non stop it should be doable in a couple of weeks.
I think it's roughly possible for any piece of software. I think the problem would be how long it would take to polish it afterwards. I think it would be an interesting experiment to run an AI only open source project though. Not sure cloning another paint program is really worth the effort however.
> I think it's roughly possible for any piece of software.
Still not possible for games (many people are attempting it on X).
It's definitely getting better with every new model and it's just a matter of time before they can actually do it.
Fable 5.1 is quite strong
https://x.com/loktar00/status/2095192155086057978
(that's just a main menu, other people are attempting entire games which is way more difficult of course and results much weaker)
The author says it's about 700k LoC that he's worked on for 20 years.[1] I don't know how many tokens that arrives at, but that seems non-trivial.
[1] https://simonwillison.net/2026/Sep/2/rick-brewster/
700k LoC of human written code is probably like 2M LoC of LLM "slop". That's probably around 8M tokens. Assuming a single fable agent that one shots the new source code at 30 tok/s, that's 74 hours. Of course it needs wayyy more tokens because it wouldn't one shot it, plus the reasoning tokens. Generation speed would be faster because you'd have many simultaneous agents though.
Bun rewrite took 6 days of coding and was a similar number of LoC, so I think a couple of weeks is definitely reasonable, although you probably need more than 5 Claude subs.
It's way more than 8M tokens. That might be around the amount of the raw output, but there's going to be tons of tool calls, back and forth... it's probably more like 100M+ tokens.
> Bun rewrite took 6 days of coding and was a similar number of LoC, so I think a couple of weeks is definitely reasonable, although you probably need more than 5 Claude subs.
Bun had numerous standardized and extensive javascript test suites to validate the slop code against. I doubt paint.net has test coverage anywhere near that complete, and without it using LLMs to rewrite something is a much larger risk.
Besides which, Bun claims the rewrite took 6 days but they took months after that to finish hammering out the bugs and actually ship, so I don't really buy the original price tag or timeline on their rewrite.
Obviously the agent would need to build a very extensive test setup for Paint.NET, a lot of it with computer use or something similar.
Opening the same files, performing the same clicks, etc should output the same on paint.net and the clone.
Obviously, yes. That's why it needs to be included in any estimate.
My point being "a few weeks and 8M tokens" is wildly unrealistic.
Yeah for sure. Easily 10x that. And obviously we're talking just output tokens. I was mostly just pointing out a theoretical lower bound.
Paint.net was originally MIT licensed but the author closed its source because people did not give him credit. Note: The MIT license does not require credit.
https://blog.paint.net/2007/12/04/freeware-authors-beware-of...
Paint.net likely still benefits from the announcement of "Open Source Alternative To Microsoft Paint" long after switching to a proprietary license, which I find more dubious than using MIT-licensed code without giving credit to the author.
Also I rather doubt a "clean-room reverse-engineered rewrite of Direct2D" can be "written by our good friend Claude, without whom this would NOT have been possible"?
> Note: The MIT license does not require credit.
The MIT notice starts with “Copyright (c) <year> <copyright holders>”, and who uses the code must include that line in any derived work.
> Also I rather doubt
Do you doubt Claude's rewrite can be defined as “clean room” (I also do)? Or that Claude is able to rewrite it? Or that it would not have been possible otherwise?
Wine is not the same as "runs on Linux". Able to be run on Linux with wine, sure.
This feels like a distinction without a difference. Would you say a Python script/Java utility doesn't "run on Linux" because you need Python/Java installed?
Programs running under wine don't have the same level of system/desktop integration as native programs, it's a very important distinction.
Sounds good, but why a .Net app can't work with .NET 10? Does it use Windows-only features?
It uses Direct2D which most of the post is about.
They added the support by slopping a Direct2D emulation layer together.
paint.net is amazing for basic png editing, I've dreamed of this day. It'a the only thing I miss from Windows. I don't understand the slashback at all.
> and EXTREMELY experimental support for running on WINE/Linux.
So it needs Wine.
Hugged to death? website is not working for me from the xfinity network.
wow if the paint.net people are trying to win an award for most popup advertising on one web page, they have my vote!
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It is very buggy, was AI slop coded, and barely works.
This is not a good release.
Don't support poorly made software. Use Gimp, Pinta, or Krita on Linux.