Hello Linux Geeksters. As you may know, Ubuntu 15.04 and derivatives are scheduled for release on the 23rd of April, but the developers are already thinking at the future versions of the *Buntu systems.
Recently, Xubuntu’s Simon Steinbeiß has announced that Xubuntu 15.10 will replace GIMP, AbiWord and Gnumeric with LibreOffice components. So, it is clear that LibreOffice Writer will be used instead of AbiWord and LibreOffice Calc will replace Gnumeric, but its not clear what application will be used instead of GIMP.
The developers have taken this decision because the three applications take a lot of place on the ISO, and they wanted to shrink it a bit.
Most likely, with GIMP dropped, there will not be any image editing software by default, but this options will be rediscussed for the Xubuntu 16.04 release.
However, GIMP, AbiWord and Gnumeric will be still available by default, so if you are not happy with their replacements, you can do:
$ sudo apt-get remove libreoffice-writer libreoffice-calc
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get auto-remove
$ sudo apt-get install gimp abiword gnumeric