I ditched GIMP for Krita and never looked back

https://www.xda-developers.com/i-ditched-gimp-for-krita-and-never-looked-back/

Publish Date: 2026-03-23 15:00:00

When I made the jump from Windows to Linux midway through 2025, I knew I had to find an alternative to one of my favorite image editors, Paint.net. It was simple, it did the job, and unfortunately, it wasn’t on Linux. So, I went for the next-best thing I could think of off the top of my head: GIMP.

GIMP was doing well for a little while, but the longer I used it, the more I felt the friction points versus what I wanted from an image editor. And it’s easy to see why I felt them; Paint.net is a very simple little app, while GIMP is a little too mighty for the use-cases I was giving it. However, one of my biggest pain points was that I wanted to use GIMP as a drawing tool, and GIMP is not great for that. So, it was time to find a new home, and I found one in Krita.

Krita’s KDE roots are a huge benefit for me

I’m already loving KDE Plasma on any Linux distro I use

When I set off to find an alternative to GIMP, one of the first apps I stumbled upon was Krita. Well, imagine my surprise when I discovered that the same people who created my favorite Linux desktop environment, KDE, also built this image editing tool that I had only just learned about!

Knowing that Krita came from the great minds over at KDE was a major reason why I downloaded it in the first place. I’m not exaggerating when I say that KDE Plasma was a huge motivator for me to finally swap from Windows to Linux, and I really appreciate how the KDE team operates and how they get things done. As such, giving their image editing software a try felt like a no-brainer.

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