There are quite a few image editing tools for Linux desktop. ‘Drawing’ is the one that promoted itself a Microsoft Paint alternative for Linux.

The app provides basic editing features, including crop, resize, skew and rotate images, apply simple filters, insert or censor text. As well, it supports for drawing with pencil, straight line, curve tool, many shapes, several brushes, with colors and other common used options.

Drawing. Tools with text

The app is targeted for GNOME, but also works on other desktop, e.g, elementaryOS Pantheon. And, it should also be compatible with the Pinephone and Librem 5 smartphones.

Other features of Drawing include:

• follow system color (light or dark).
• support PNG, JPEG, and BMP.
• Copy to clipboard.
• Keyboard shortcuts.
• Undo/Redo.
• Full-screen mode.

Drawing Dark Mode

How to Install Drawing in Ubuntu:

The app is available in Ubuntu repositories but old! For the latest release, user may use either the Flatpak package, or the Ubuntu PPA.

The Ubuntu PPA so far provides the packages for Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 21.10, and derivatives, e.g., Linux Mint 20.

1. Add the Ubuntu PPA

Firstly, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run the command below to add PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:cartes/drawing

Type user password (no asterisk) feedback when it asks and hit Enter to continue.

2. Update package cache:

Ubuntu 18.04 user need to manually refresh package cache after adding new software sources:

sudo apt update

3. Install Drawing:

Finally, install the app via command:

sudo apt install drawing

Remove ‘Drawing’:

To remove the image editing tool, use command:

sudo apt remove --autoremove drawing

And remove the Ubuntu PPA either by running command in terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:cartes/drawing

or use the ‘Software & Updates’ utility under Other Software tab.