Ubuntu – Gimp 2.10 will not start due to undefined symbol: gegl_operation_get_source_space

Here we go:

sudo apt-get remove gimp
sudo apt-get update 
sudo apt-get purge gimp libgegl* libbabl* 
sudo apt-get install gimp 

This worked for me.

Source: http://bentwithlove.blogspot.com/2011/05/gimperror-while-loading-shared.html

And if you add the ppa

ppa:matthaeus123/mrw-gimp-svn

you can get the latest 2.7 gimp!

The problem is that gimp failed to create the gimp-2.8 directory in your /home/user/ directory. Just create the hidden directory this way;

mkdir .gimp-2.8

and then start gimp