The digital painting program Krita 2.9 was released today. This is the biggest Krita release that brings dozens of new features, improved functions, fixed bugs, spit and polish all over the place.

According to the official release note, eleven of the twelve Kickstarter-funded features are in the 2.9 release, and the last one will be included in the Krita 2.9.1.

Krita 2.9 comes with support for viewing images with multiple documents, ilustration transformation improvements, HDR painting support, painting and workflow improvements, filter and layer improvements, 3D texturing and image support, and many other changes. See the official release note for details.

Install Krita 2.9 in Ubuntu:

For Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04, and Ubuntu 12.04, the latest Krita is available in the Krita Lime PPA.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kubuntu-ppa/backports

To add the ppa, open terminal from the Dash or application menu. When it opens, run:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:dimula73/krita

Then update system package cache:

sudo apt-get update

Finally install the latest Krita packages:

sudo apt-get install krita-2.9 krita-2.9-dbg

NOTE: Krita 2.9 will be installed in /opt/ directory, you have to manually install the icons and launchers:

In terminal run below command to copy the launcher (.desktop) files from /opt/ to system directory:

cd /opt/project-neon/share/ && sudo cp -r applications/ /usr/share/

Then copy Krita icons to system icons directory:

cd /opt/project-neon/share/ && sudo cp -r icons/ /usr/share/

Finally create soft link to the Krita executable:

sudo ln -s /opt/project-neon/bin/krita /usr/bin/krita

Restart computer and you should be able to start Krita 2.9 from menu.