Show HN: Paintpot – Kid-friendly MSPaint clone for Linux
Most of the alternatives diverged from the true fun of MSPaint that I had as a child. My children also seem to enjoy this. The closest existing project was "Drawing" on Linux, but I felt it couldn't decide if it was a vector or a raster editor, and this confused my kids, and made good fill pours difficult. Features added beyond original Paint: - Draw circles starting from the center. - OKLCH Palette - Visible pixel grid when zoomed in. - Resizing canvas never destroys pixels. - Builds
Read original source
Source record
Recorded metrics
points · 2 votes
2026-11-15 04:11:00.027Z
cumulative since publication
Research analysis
Project record
Repository: marktbaldridge/paintpot. Source account: Most of the alternatives diverged from the true fun of MSPaint that I had as a child. My children also seem to enjoy this. The closest existing project was "Drawing" on Linux, but I felt it couldn't decide if it was a vector or a raster editor, and this confused my kids, and made good fill pours difficult. Features added beyond original Paint: - Draw circles starting from the center. - OKLCH Palette - Visible pixel grid when zoomed in. - Resizing canvas never destroys pixels. - Builds
Observed adoption & comparisons
Source votes: 2 votes (Nov 15, 2026 UTC; cumulative since publication)
Adoption decision
Evaluate it against the tool or manual workflow it would replace. The stored record supports discovery; it does not yet establish reliability, lower operating cost or commercial adoption.
Unverified requirements
Not verified: license permissions, required hardware, installation steps, maintenance status and a representative task with its failure cases.
Next test
Choose one real task and a current alternative. Record the commit, environment, input, output, elapsed time and failure behavior; retain the result before recommending adoption.