Edit: Unfortunately, the images originally included in this post are gone, because of hosting problems in late 2009. My apologies.

I’m finding more and more GTK1.2 applications that, while still very ugly, are every bit as functional as higher-end applications, but run about four times as fast on low-end hardware. Case in point: xzgv, a handy little image viewer.

I found it via the Damn Small Linux application page, which lists a few other programs worth investigation. If you’ve ever delved into DSL, you’ve probably messed with xzgv once or twice.

For image management, it’s great. The GUI is incredibly simple — file hierarchy and viewer panes. You click, it responds. There’s a thumbnailing effect and a tagging system if you need to roll files from one folder to another, or if you just like to mark things for later reference. It even handles EXIF data.

Most everything can be driven by the keyboard too, but there’s lots of in-game menu options. If you want a quick rc file with some common settings, paste this into a .xzgvrc file in your home directory; this is what I’m using right now, for the screenshot.

dither-hicol yes
exif-orient yes
geometry 912x684
selector-width 212
show-thumbnail-messages yes
skip-parent yes
statusbar yes
thin-rows yes
zoom yes
zoom-reduce-only yes

You should really adjust that to your liking, though. Check man xzgv for more ideas.

Now again, it’s no beauty queen. GTK1.2 is just genetically ugly, as I’ve mentioned before. But if you’re in the under-400Mhz range and even GTK2 feels chunky, it can get the job done quickly and concisely.