Hi!

I just compiled Pinta at one of my systems (not in repositories).
I surprised to see, that the last version is switched to dotnet (MS).

Anyway I went on and installed dotnet from MS repositories.
Then I compiled and installed Pinta and works fine!

At my astonishment (not really), dotnet comes with telemetry enabled.
I disabled it, following the official guidance.
(Setting at bashrc DOTNET_CLI_TELEMETRY_OPTOUT=1).

However, I found some post over the net, complaining that even with disabled telemetry, they noticed "curious" activity on their systems.

Here's a couple of them:
https://github.com/dotnet/sdk/issues/12841
https://github.com/nuke-build/nuke/issues/765

MS says that these activities are "innocent" and not related, but do you really trust MS?

What's your take?
Can we trust MS, or I should go on and uninstall dotnet (and Pinta) and install GIMP instead?

PS. Although Pinta declares Mono as its requirement, it didn't worked with it, and present me instead the message "dotnet not found"!

Uh, no.

You can look through the source if you want.
https://github.com/PintaProject/Pinta

And then there is Microsoft.
https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/download

Microsoft is a black box. Use their stuff if you wish.

No, m$ cannot be trusted. Furthermore it has worked hard over many decades to earn and maintain that level of distrust.

Your two main options are GIMP and Krita, depending on what type of activity you plan. Though there can be others depending on your plans. What problem are you trying to solve?

THANKS guys!!!

I posted at Pinta's bugtracker (at Launchpad) and the developer replied me that Dotnet is the new requirement.
Obviously the bug is, the forgotten to be updated official documentation, from the previous version.

Needless to say, I uninstalled both Pinta and Dotnet.
I'll go with GIMP.

My needs are fairly simple. Just cropping an image, putting some (indicating) arrows and such simple tasks.
I used GIMP at past, but I went with Pinta because it was quicker to compile and lighter to run.
Of course, this is no reason to allow the MS spyware to do its staff, so...farewell Pinta!

THANKS AGAIN!!!

No problem.

I tend to use GIMP for that kind of activity but it is definitely overkill in that case, same for Krita. There is also MyPaint if you just want some quick arrows. It's supposed to be more responsive or faster to use for drawing.