Hello, I'm trying to convert a black and white colored .gif to .svg using the bitmap tracing feature but I'm having a little problem. I've followed step by step a you tube tutorial created by FWWSWW (Transform your image into a vector-Inkscape) which worked but for some reason it causes curves and corners to become boxy, rugged, and a little choppy there's also gray areas that should be black. If the gray areas where black it would look perfectly fine. Does anyone have any suggestions (which requirements I should increase/decrease in the window) or maybe another opensource solution.

Hi scotfree,
Welcome aboard!
I can't answer your questions, but I'm thinking that those who can, might need to see a screen shot, or some other visual example of what the problem is. I do know that the trace bitmap feature is quite flexible, and think it's probably possible to get what you want, once you learn which settings you need to address. Good luck

knowing what settings you have currently would help.

Thank you for your concern here's the settings I used

Mode: Single Scan: Creates a Path
Brightness cutoff on Threshold: 0,450
Edge detection off Threshold: 0,650
Color quantization off Threshold: 8
Invert Image off

Multiple Scans: Creates a group of paths
Brightness steps off Scans: 185
Colors: on
Grays: off
Smooth:off Stack Scans:on Remove Background:on

Options: Options
Suppress Speckles:on
Smooth Corners:off
Optimize Paths:on

The original image is black&white? Simply select the "brightness cutoff" in the 'single scan' section, and set the Threshold to 0.9 (The brightness cutoff threshold tells inkscape what shades it should include, 0 = keep everything white ... 1 = everything black... putting at 0.9 will make almost every visible thing black, leaving only the extremely light colours untouched)
Hit OK, and you should have your results.

If the image is still too rough and blocky, you can select the traced-shape and go to Path -> Simplify (Ctrl + L) to smooth the image a little bit.