Vector graphics editors

Looking for the best vector graphics editor to use in Linux, for illustration as well as just for charts or maps? Alexander Tolstoy covers all the angles.

There was a time when vector graphics editors were widely considered special-purpose software, used mostly by professional graphic designers. These days the barrier to entry is low, which means that almost anyone can produce cool visual content, making creating vector drawings an enjoyable activity for both kids and adults.

One of the great advantages of vector graphics is scalability. Unlike raster (or bitmap) graphics, vector drawings don’t get pixelated when you scale them up: you can manipulate them in any way and your drawing will

“Despite the variety of apps out there, most support the standard SVG vector graphics file format.”

always retain the initial level of detail. Despite the great variety of applications out there, most support SVG, which is the industry-standard format for scalable vector graphics.

For this Roundup we’ve selected five top vector editors, including perhaps the most widely known: Inkscape and

LibreOfficeDraw (which is part of the popular productivity suite). The other three are sK1, designed for prepress tasks; Karbon from the KDE-centric

Calligra office suite (formerly KOffice); and XaraXtreme. The last of these is a bit of an oddity in the Linux world: it was released as open source software back in 2006 but implements some features of the commercial XaraDesignerPro.