Primitives in Gimp

[pistacchio]

Hi to all,
I've read here and there (on this forum and others) that one of the preferred open source programs for pixel art is the Gimp. I work on a Linux box and I've been using the Gimp for a while, not for pixel art though.

How do you, Gimp users, work around the lack of primitives like circles, lines, arcs and the like?
Thanks.

[AdamAtomic]

you should be able to create those shapes using aliased masks however they are not necessary nor even particularly useful most of the time in executing pixel art

[Ai]

Circles? use the Ellipse select tool, then either fill the selection or stroke with Pencil tool.
Turn off Antialiasing for the ellipse-select tool, of course.

Lines? shift-click with the Pencil tool
Arcs? use the Path tool, then Stroke the path (with paint tool 'pencil') when you've decided it's right.
Polygons? Freehand select, or path tool, and fill the resulting selection
Polylines?  Hold down shift and click,click,click.. Or stroke a freehand selection or path , with pencil tool

Anyway, for pixel art, if you are not animating, I recommend Grafx2 much more highly as a free pixel-art oriented paint program.
http://code.google.com/p/grafx2/
It handles most of the above in a more pixelly, and faster to use, way.

[Peach]

I totally agree with Ai
I'm using grafx2 most of the time, but currently it lacks layers so I'm using it for single elements and then compose the whole in gimp. but heavily depends on what I'm doing