How to install the Vectr graphics editor on Linux

On the lookout for an excellent graphics design tool for Linux? Consider Vectr, a free, professional graphics design editing tool for Linux, Mac, and Windows. It’s a well-made tool that focuses on ease of use and presenting incredible image quality via vector graphics.

The Vector editor has a native Linux client that users can download and run directly on their favorite Linux-bases operating system. In this guide, we’ll show you how to get it going.

Arch Linux instructions

The Vectr graphics design application can be installed directly from the Arch Linux user repository. The package build collects the universal Linux binary directly from the Vectr website and puts it into Arch for an easy installation experience.

If you’d like to install the Vectr application in this manner, on your Arch Linux PC, you’ll first need to install the Git and Base-devel packages. These packages are easily installable through the Pacman packaging manager. Without them, it is not possible to build AUR packages.

Open up a terminal window on your Arch Linux PC by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T or Ctrl + Shift on the keyboard. Then, once the terminal window is open, use the pacman command below to get the AUR dependencies installed on your system.

sudo pacman -S git base-devel

Now that both Git and Base-devel are installed on the system, we can use the git clone command to download Vectr directly from the AUR.

git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/vectr.git

The code shouldn’t take too long to download, as it’s only a couple megabytes in size. When it’s done cloning, use the CD command to move into the “vectr” folder on your PC.

cd vectr

Inside of the code folder, use the makepkg command to generate a new Arch Linux package.

makepkg -sri

Having issues with the AUR version of Vectr? Consider trying out the Snap package release instead!

Generic binary instructions

The Vectr developers support all of Linux by releasing a generic ZIP archive with their program bundled inside. Releasing the software this way is a good move because if they had gone with a downloadable DEB or RPM file, many users who don’t use those packaging formats would be left out.

On the website, there is both a 32-bit and 64-bit release of Vectr. To get your copy, head over to the official download page, and click the Linux option. Or, if you don’t feel like dealing with the website, open up a terminal window with Ctrl + Alt + T or Ctrl + Shift and use the commands below to start a download.

64-bit

wget http://download.vectr.com/desktop/0.1.16/linux/Vectr-0.1.16.zip

32-bit

wget http://download.vectr.com/desktop/0.1.16/linux/Vectr-0.1.16-ia32.zip

With the ZIP file done downloading to your Linux PC, it’s time to extract the code from inside of the Vectr ZIP archive. Using the unzip command, extract the contents of the Vectr archive.

unzip Vectr-*.zip

Extracted, the unzip tool will create a new folder in your home directory with the label of “linux-unpacked.” Using mv, rename it to “vectr-editor.”

mv linux-unpacked vectr-editor

From here, you can run the program with:

cd ~/vectr-editor ./vectr

Snap package instructions

The vast majority of Linux users have easy access to the Ubuntu Snap store. Since so many people have access to this store, dozens of apps are on the store, including Vectr.

Ubuntu, Debian, Arch Linux, Fedora, OpenSUSE, Gentoo and lots of other popular Linux distributions now support the Snap platform, and so it’s incredibly easy to install Vectr this way. However, distributions don’t enable Snap package support out of the box (aside from Ubuntu,) so before going over how to install the app, you’ll need to go through the process of enabling Snaps on your Linux PC. The easiest way to get Snaps working on Linux is by following our guide here.

When Snap support is set up and working, installing Vectr can quickly be done with the snap install command below.

sudo snap install vectr

Online instructions

It’s great that there are various ways to install Vectr on Linux. That said, not all of the installation methods are perfect. So, thankfully, aside from the native Linux apps users can install, it’s also possible to get the full Vectr graphics editing experience in any web browser.

Note: we highly recommend using the Chromium browser. It uses a similar rendering engine to Google Chrome and seems to work with the user interface, tools, and app features the best. To get your hands on the latest version of the Chromium browser for Linux, check out our guide on the subject!

To access the editing suite, head over to the website link here and create an account. After that, editing can begin!