I've some problems with the performance with GIMP on my box and I made a small video to show the performance of GIMP canvas rotation together Krita 2.9.1 to have a comparison.

Some infos to understand better: Gimp devel git master installed on ubuntu gnome 14.04.1, i5, 8GB memory. AMD card with proprietary drivers enabled.

I've noted that on my ambient GIMP has a bit problem to do the fluid canvas rotation.
Talked with Joo Bueno, he made the same test on similar hardware configuration (i5, 8Gb memory), but with a big format, on Fedora KDE with the two apps and are an optimal and fluid canvas rotation. On Joo Fedora KDE box the image test was 3500 x 34900 px, i5 com 8GB, GPU intel and free driver.
In my case I'm using the AMD video-card Gallium 0.4 on AMD CAICOS with 1Gb Memory, on Bueno Box he's using the mainboard video chipset of intel.

Well I think that is very critical the relation between GIMP and current ambient on ubuntu-gnome 14.04.+ and versus card board>proprietary drivers.

How is possible to build an optimal ambient to GIMP on gnome UI using the opensource free drivers?

Now with the new possibilities of GIMP 2.10 is very important to build an advices series advices concerning the video card or not, libraries and minimal requisites to use GIMP with an optimal or ideal performance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6bO8xS9zds

*Other notes about Opencl enable and not on GIMP.* If the Opencl is enabled, the cpus is used more massive way than Krita with enable OpenGL on their preferences.

On Mon, Mar 30, 2015 at 12:03 PM, Americo Gobbo wrote:

Now with the new possibilities of GIMP 2.10 is very important to build an advices series advices concerning the video card or not, libraries and minimal requisites to use GIMP with an optimal or ideal performance.

I've ask to ldd the libraries used of gimp-2.9: http://pastebin.com/BA0BYnRF