How to Install Collaborative Drawing App Drawpile in Ubuntu 18.04

This quick tutorial shows how to install the latest free collaborative drawing program Drawpile (2.1.10 so far) in Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 18.10, Ubuntu 19.04.

Drawpile is a Free/Libre networked drawing program that allows multiple people to sketch on the same image simultaneously. It supports the OpenRaster image file format and thus works well with applications such as MyPaint, Krita and GIMP.

Drawpile is a KDE software. Besides building from source, Ubuntu users can install it via flatpak (containerized software package) by doing following steps:

1. Open terminal either via Ctrl+Alt+T keyboard shortcut or by searching for ‘terminal’ from application menu. When it opens, run command to install Flatpak first:

sudo apt-get install flatpak

Type user password (no asterisk feedback) when it prompts and hit Enter.

2. Then add Flathub repository via command:

flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

3. Finally install Drawpile via command:

flatpak install flathub net.drawpile.drawpile

Once installed, launch it from system application menu and enjoy!

(Optional) To remove the software run command in terminal:

flatpak uninstall net.drawpile.drawpile