… a lot has changed in Gimp Version 2.10.8 (release 2018, so actually not that fresh, but now in Debian 9 and 10 per default this version with it’s greyish look is installed)
one’s squared selection tool ain’t workin’ no more – whats THE problem?
notice the “cannot subtract from an empty selection” status on the bottom screen.
this is because square selection tool now has multiple modes and it seems to be per default (after installation) to be in “subtraction” mode.
just select click the little “replace the current selection” square next to Mode: 
to get the squared selection tool back to it’s default
gimp changelog:
- Though the updated GIMP release policy allows cool new features in micro releases, we also take pride on the stability of our software (so that you can edit images feeling that your work is safe).
- In this spirit, GIMP 2.10.8 is mostly the result of dozens of bug fixes and optimizations.
- In particular, chunk size of image projections are now determined dynamically depending on processing speed, allowing better responsiveness of GIMP on less powerful machines whereas processing would be faster on more powerful ones.
- Moreover various tools have been added to generate performance logs, which will allow us to optimize GIMP even more in the future. As with most recent optimizations of GIMP, these are the results of Ell’s awesomeness. Thanks Ell!
- In the meantime, various bugs have been fixed in
wavelet-decompose, the new vertical text feature (including text along path), selection tools, and more. On Windows, we also improved RawTherapee detection (for RawTherapee 5.5 and over), working in sync with the developers of this very nice RAW processing software. And many, many more fixes, here and there… - The Save dialog also got a bit of retouching as it now shows more prominently the features preventing backward compatibility (in case you wish to send images to someone using an older version of GIMP). Of course, we want to stress that we absolutely recommend to always use the latest version of GIMP. But life is what it is, so we know that sometimes you have no choice. Now it will be easier to make your XCF backward compatible (which means, of course, that some new features must not be used).
… src: https://www.gimp.org/news/2018/11/08/gimp-2-10-8-released/
well well well this might all be fine and dandy… but everybody knows: users hate GUI changes ( and if is just the color of a button that has changed… it is already a change they can not adapt to and will throw them off rails for days! X-D (no seriously) X-D)
to view a series of strange gimp art visit nerdpol.ch “hashtag” gimp
probably related links:
Selection tool not working anymore? Can’t crop anything
byu/PlatformKing inGIMP
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