Pinta is a free and open source drawing application which is very popular among Linux users. It won’t be incorrect to term it as an open source alternative to Microsoft Paint. Pinta is available for all major platforms such as Linux, Windows and Mac OS X.
While GIMP is popular as full featured image editing software, Pinta is more of a paint and drawing tool. I have used it extensively in my tutorials for drawing arrows and curves on the screenshots and I can say that it’s my favorite drawing app in Linux.
New features in Pinta 1.6
After over an year, Pinta has released version 1.6, fixing over 50 bugs and introducing some new features. New features are as following:
- Line tool now supports drawing curves and arrows
- Shapes can be edited even after being drawn
- All shape tools now support drawing dashed lines
- All selection tools now support the Union, Exclude, Xor, and Intersection modes
- Add-in manager now consists of ‘add ins’
- New options in command line usage
New version also fixes the annoying bug where you cannot open a file with Pinta in right click menu option. You can read all the changes in the release note.
Install Pinta 1.6 in Ubuntu and Linux Mint
Pinta 1.6 was released a few years ago and now it is available in Ubuntu 16.04, 18.04 and other versions.
Just make sure to have universe repository enabled and then install it from the software center:
Or you can use the following command to install it:
sudo apt install pintaTo download the source code or to get the installation files for Windows and Mac OS X, check the download page of Pinta.
In a related post, you can also check out best photo applications for Linux.
