Why are some plug-ins missing that were available in earlier versions of the GIMP?
Some of the plug-ins have proven unstable. These have been moved into a separate download, which should be available wherever you got the GIMP, in the file gimp-plugins-unstable-VERSION.tar.gz or gimp-plugins-unstable-VERSION.tar.bz2 . Since this list can change frequently, it is not included here. If you had a really early developer version (such as 0.54), the plug-in interface changed completely, and some of the plug-ins may not have been ported. If this is the case, feel free to port it yourself, but check the Plug-in Registry first, because someone else may have recently ported the plug-in you’re after.