Google has just released a very nice port of its free Picasa photo management software to Linux.

I tried it out this morning and found the user experience to be quite impressive. Since I am not using Redhat or Debian, I had to use the old school SHAR installer that those of us back in the USENET days might get all nostalgic over. Once it unpacked the bits, it launched straight into a graphical installer that did an admirable job of putting all the required bits (about 24MB) into my home directory. After installation, all I had to do is click on “Start” and It Just Worked.

Picasa was quite nice on Windows, and the Linux port is snappy and seems to have all of the same polish that its more-refined Windows version has. I haven’t actually imported photos from my camera yet, but I might give that a shot later on. This is, after all, my work laptop, so I don’t really want to saddle it with my 7500+ photos.

By the way, anyone who doubts the usefulness of WINE to Linux should doubt no longer. This is an outstanding use of the technology. And while Picasa is not open source, WINE is, and Google did plenty to give back to the community.