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Comment by dmz73 | Hacker News Reader

I know MS Paint is seen as a joke but what is the Linux program with equivalent functionality that actually works? Recently I wanted to copy image from Firefox and paste it into a program to crop and add some text. Ubuntu did not have a program installed that would let me do that. I tried few different programs available in the repository and none of them worked well enough to perform this task. Even GIMP was not usable because the icons and text would not scale up enough to be visible by human eye on 4k 15" laptop screen. In the end I had to reboot into Windows and use MS Paint which had this done in a flash. So, what is the Linux Paint that actually works like MS Paint?

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KolourPaint is the closest equivalent to Paint, and supports HiDPI display scaling:

http://kolourpaint.org

For a little more functionality (but still less complexity than GIMP or Krita), Pinta has a tabbed interface based on Paint.NET. It supports layers, but does not yet support HiDPI:

https://www.pinta-project.com

GIMP's current version (based on GTK+ 2) only has basic support for HiDPI, but their development version (based on GTK+ 3) has full support. I've found it to be quite stable:

https://www.gimp.org/downloads/devel/

https://www.gimp.org/news/2021/05/08/gimp-2-99-6-released/

Krita supports HiDPI, and has a different feature set compared to GIMP:

https://krita.org

Seconding (or third-fourthing?) kolourpaint. Not just the scaling, but I love that it supports true png transparency as just like if it were another color.

Your point is well made, but for anyone wondering about this, I've found Krita[1] to be better than the GIMP for everyday use like this.

[1] https://krita.org/en/

Okay but mspaint is starting so fast and consume so little memory.

I use mspaint seriously for mock-ups. Because you can’t do too much you dont waste time on perfectionism you can just do enough to communicate a design. It’s a brain hack. Lack of features (and vectors) is a feature!

100% agree. I used to use pencil and paper (and still do if I'm in person), but for a quick and dirty sketch to communicate ideas over screen share, MSPaint hits the sweet spot between speed and flexibility

Yes. Pencil and paper is better for a new ui design. Paint comes into its own when you already am have the app and desire to change the interface, or say create a new dialog box similar to an existing one.

paint.net is tone better and has nice OTB shortcuts.

Windows XP version of MS Paint seems to go great with Wine: https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=applicatio...

I use kolourpaint for that. If you don't want the Qt dependencies, also try mypaint, I used it in the past and it works well too.

A great web-based version is https://www.photopea.com

https://jspaint.app

That’s a web based version of photoshop!

Dibuja "Simple to use paint program like Paintbrush for Mac or classic MS Paint, but for Linux" https://launchpad.net/dibuja

ImageMagick. Even has a command line interface!

On a serious note, I don’t have any problems with GIMP, 2.10 is supposed to have hiDPI support. Have you tried Krita and MyPaint?

The one I always use is Kolourpaint. Installable via apt.

You could probably get pretty far with LibreOffice Impress.

I usually use Google Drive for this kind of stuff (specifically the Drawing app.)

Pinta

(Its like MS Paint on Linux but with layers.)

Pinta is like paint.net on Linux but way less polished (it's image editor core started as a port of Paint.net 3.0's when paint.net was still open source, but it's UI was a clone in GTK). I remember being particularly unimpressed when I tried using it for low res image manipulation and discovered the selection "marching ants" and resize handles were rendered at the canvas resolution, for example.

At least for me, Krita has ended up as my paint.net replacement, but it is a step up in complexity from paint.net (and hence two steps up from paint)

For me, MS Paint is really good at pixel art. Pinta seems to be good at it as well. At first glance, Krita looks like more of a painting software, kind of closer to Photoshop than to Paint.

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