xv zgv xzgv and gimp

For over a month now I've been doing almost all my work on this old laptop running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, and by and large it's been fine. Yesterday, I had to modify an image for a book cover. Hitherto, I would have used xv or inkscape, and I went looking to install xv. Google turned up zgv, so I installed that. Turns out it works directly with the graphics without X, and I lost control of my system temporarily. When I got back, I installed xzgv, but that turned out to be a viewer, without functionality to modify the images. Finally, I installed gimp, and got the job done, at the expense of a bit of a learning curve. It's a really fine piece of software, but almost does too much, and there was at least one obvious thing
I might have wanted to do that I couldn't see how to do. Since it didn't matter yesterday, I let it go after a quick read through the manual.

My question is: Next time I have to edit an image file, is there something I can install that looks a bit more like xv?

I don't know xv, but I assume you do realise that inkscape is available for ubuntu, and as you seem to know that and have used it in the past, why not use it now?

I like xv, and have been using it for over 20 years. It's shareware, written by a John Bradley, and allows easy browsing and editing of images.
Someone just sent me a .deb installation file for it, and I've installed it and it's fine.
Since it's not gnu copyleft, I guess I should not upload the .deb here.
I suggest people who want it should search for it:
xv_3.10a-jumbo20050501-1_i386.deb
and the documentation:
xv-doc_3.10a-jumbo20050501-1_all.deb

I'm going to mark this thread closed now.