Stuff on art on Linux is pretty rare, so I'll share some notes & things that have worked (or not) for me. A 'learning in public' type page.
Please note, I'm still new to Linux & what fits my art needs might not fit yours. This page is based on my experience on Kubuntu 25.10 as a hobbyist illustrator
Page subject to updates, clarifications, and improvements.
last updated: February 06, 2026
Go back
Krita
My main drawing program. For an optimal setup;
- Use the Appimage: Due to the amount of dependencies Krita has it can be difficult for package maintainers to bundle, leading to performance issues & missing functionality. For example, python plugins might not work on native packaged versions. The appimage is a portable version with everything bundled with it.
- Appimages don't intergrate with the desktop by default and have to be re-downloaded if you want to update, but you can use a tool like Gearlever to manage this & have it be recognized as a program.
- X11 is optimal: Krita 5.X currently not optimized for Wayland. It runs via XWayland, but this presents performance issues for some, and has missing features like color management tools. As of right now I haven't stumbled into major bugs (the one I bug I thought I ran into was because I didn't set the transform tool to 'fast preview'). But this is my experience and yours may vary.
- Krita 6 is being developed with adding in more functionality to Wayland in mind (but this build is really early & buggy).
Drawing Monitor
I use Open Tablet Driver. This way I can swap out tablets w/o having to purge or reinstall drivers every time. The baked-in tablet drivers don't pick up my monitor (XP pen Innovator 16)
NOTE: For a lot of popular hardware, drivers are baked into the Linux kernel already. I'm pretty sure this is the case for most Wacom tablets, but for people struggling with non-Wacoms this could be an easier option if you're ok with loosing some functionality. Most tablets are ok but you can check OTD's website to see if yours is supported & what issues it has: Tablets - Open Tablet Driver.
- For pen pressure, use artist mode. The other modes don't support pen pressure & are better suited for games like Osu
- I've had issues with KDE's built in tablet pen calibration (sometimes it'd go unresponsive...), so I use the Tablet Calibration Plugin on OTD instead. It requires manual tweaking, but it gets the job done
NVIDIA GPU - or how to avoid freezes when plugging in your monitor
NVIDIA GPUs are notoriously finnicky on Linux. One issue monitor users may run into is the OS freezing when you plug in a second monitor via the GPU. This may happen if you're using the open source Nouveau driver, which is what's default on most distributions. It gets the job done, but due to the reverse engineered nature of it it's not perfect & tends to work better with older cards.
Installing the proprietary drivers caused the freezing issue to go away for me, and these are currently the best option for NVIDIA users
- Use the NVIDIA drivers packaged by your distro maintainer: The ones NVIDIA provides onsite takes extra steps to get running properly as they're not optimized for any one system. From what I've read, these are a last resort. Here's the steps for Ubuntu for example, but the steps for other distros may vary.
- Do not use NVIDIA's official open source drivers: From what I've read around, these are mainly for developer refrence vs desktop use
If you have an AMD or Intel GPU, your drivers are baked into the kernel & you don't have to worry about this at all.
Other Quirks
Some of the misc. quirks I've experienced.
- When unplugging the tablet on my main system, the OS will still behave like it has a second screen / still lets you drag windows & move your mouse to a phanthom display. It also won't fully go to sleep if I close the the laptop in this state, nor when the tablet is still plugged in. I think the OS might think it's 'docked' & behaves like a desktop as a result. Not a huge issue, goes away if you put it to sleep via menu.
- I'm leaning on NVIDIA quirk here, since this doesn't happen on my old laptop with a AMD GPU.
- There's some inconsistent behavior if I leave the tablet plugged in? I set it up so the second screen is below my main, but sometimes it'll default to another setting. Still haven't figured out how to configure the the display-switcher-menu-thingy (what you see with Meta + P. Not sure what it's called...)
- Under artist mode, I can't get the cursor to not snap back to where I last moved the mouse. I made this issue vanish for a split second... then it went back to this. No idea what happened. The problem:
- I move my cursor via trackpad/regular mouse
- I use the pen, and lifting it away causes the cursor to vanish
- If I move my cursor via trackpad or regular mouse again, it snaps back to where I last used the trackpad/regular mouse instead of where I last used the pen.
- In Firefox w/yomitan installed, selecting text will trigger Yomitan. Very niche bug, makes web browsing annoying if you're using your tablet as your main mouse
- I wonder if something in Artist mode conflicts with yomitan, or relies on a similar function to holding shift...
Go back