Tux Paint
graphics software
Tux Paint is a free and open source raster graphics editor geared towards young children. The project was started in 2002 by Bill Kendrick who continues to maintain and improve it, with help from numerous volunteers. Tux Paint is seen by many as a free software alternative to Kid Pix, a similar proprietary educational software product.
History
Tux Paint was initially created for the Linux operating system, as there was no suitable drawing program for young children available for Linux at that time. It is written in the C programming language and uses various free and open source helper libraries, including the Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL), and has since been made available for Microsoft Windows, Apple macOS, Android, Haiku, and other platforms.
Selected milestone releases:
2002.06.16 (June 16, 2002) – initial release (brushes, stamps, lines, eraser), two days after coding started.
2002.06.30 (June 30, 2002) – first Magic Tools added (blur, blocks, negative).
2002.07.31 (July 31, 2002) – localization support added.
0.9.11 (June 17, 2003) – right-to-left support, UTF-8 support in Text tool.
0.9.14 (October 12, 2004) – Tux Paint Config.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Tux Paint” as graphics software. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the science & nature register because the source frames it as graphics software. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Stable identifiers, scientific names and standards terminology offer the best bridge between this overview and specialist evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q390406. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2002, 2003 and 2004.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tux Paint” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.