Light Matter v0.1.5 was just released, and it brings two major changes:
- Linux support through AppImage builds.
- Major performance improvement for the gallery.
Linux support
andrinbr was kind enough to update my GitHub workflow for automatic version releases to include a Linux build packaged as an AppImage. You can now download the latest release from GitHub Releases page and make it executable:
chmod +x LightMatter-*.AppImage
./LightMatter-*.AppImagePerformance improvements
The thumbnail generator used in the gallery was completely reworked.
Libvips (in the form of wasm-vips) is used to generate thumbnails to improve general performance and reduce memory usage when viewing the gallery. The initial implementation was using a non-optimised code path and is now replaced with a more efficient one as suggested by developers of wasm-vips. That reduces memory usage even further and is a welcome change in an age of overpriced RAM.
The second important improvement is that the thumbnail generator is now multithreaded. This helps reduce UI stutters when generating thumbnails and improves how fast thumbnails are generated as most CPUs have multiple cores today.