Xara Xtreme

The commercial version of XaraXtreme claims to have as many features as Inkscape, and possibly has more. XaraXtreme for Linux, however, is a shadow of its commercial original. It’s still quite feature-rich, though, and offers a great many node, curve, shape and blend tools, rich text formatting, colour and gradient editing, and more. Generally, it feels mature and enables you to create complex artwork made from lots of finely crafted vector objects. It ships with a nice set of vector clip art and also has a built-in bitmap tracer. Many features are left unimplemented – such as advanced freehand and brush tools, or a bitmap editor – but XaraXtreme still makes a good companion for digital artists. It offers cool bevel effects and adjustable shadows, as well as precise control over lines and curves, plus kerning and tracking support for text.