Fallen Tech Blog

Since I made the move to 100% Linux a year or so ago I found myself missing some parts of Windows. This is the thing that causes the most hesitation in people when looking at alternative operating systems - what do I have to give up?

While I have been able to replace nearly all the applications I used with free, open (and usually better) alternatives, there are still a few I missed.

One such application is MSPaint, until now.

UPDATED 2008-03-13

Follow up:

It started when I wanted to draw a simple diagram for a friend of mine to explain the inner workings of inline skates.

Linux has a brilliant graphics tool called The Gimp (gimp.org) which is not unlike Adobe Photoshop (adobe.com) for Windows. It is a superb application that I use all the time to do some pretty amazing things.

One of the short comings of these advanced graphics packages however is that it can be difficult just to quickly draw a few simple lines to show an idea or a concept. For these tasks in Windows, I'd use the one program that I consider Microsoft got right - MSPaint.

So, here I was, wanting to draw a simple little picture and finding myself stuck once again so I decided to find an equivalent to Paint and if that failed, write one.

Thankfully I came across a wonderful application called KolourPaint (sourceforge.net). As the K implies, it's a KDE (kde.org) application and therefore Qt (trolltech.com) based, but if that's OK with you then you will not be disappointed with this MSPaint successor.

KolourPaint has all the features of the original MSPaint, and even sticks faithful to the same menu structure, layout and hotkeys. People used to MSPaint should be able to dive straight in.

While KolourPaint has some extra supp'ed up features, they don't croud or complicate the application which is of course VERY important. Some of the new features include transparency support, many more zoom levels, free rotate, autocrop and various effects via a seperate window.

UPDATE 2008-03-13: If you don't want the weight of QT/KDE, I can also recommend mtPaint (sourceforge.net). While it's more advanced in ways, and difficult to use in others, it's still your best bet IMHO if you don't want KDE and/or QT on your system.

Once again Linux and Open Source has come to my rescue and provided me with a BETTER, free and open alternative to my old proprietory ways - sometimes I just love the Open Source community.