# Inkscape 95 Hacker News commenters recommended Inkscape and 24 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** A free, open-source vector editor many use to replace Illustrator for figures and SVG work, though it can produce messy SVGs and suffers slowdowns, crashes and regressions. ## Why people recommend it - Replaces Adobe Illustrator (4 comments): "Krita and Inkscape have successfully replaced Photoshop and Illustrator for me." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46581442)) "Between Inkscape and Photopea I haven’t touched an Adobe graphics app in years." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49990407)) "I’ve moved to Darktable, Inkscape and libreoffice here mostly for my needs." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48997219)) - Fine-grained SVG and path control (4 comments): "The advantage is that it produces sane output paths that I can edit easily for final manual touches in Inkscape." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46797132)) "Inkscape lets me adjust kern of each letter because the curve can cause letters to touch." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46011480)) "open the SVG file in Inkscape and render as PNG/JPG at any resolution you want" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46190205)) - Great for figures and graphics (4 comments): "1.0 and after, and it's been truly a dream. I now use it to make all my figures for my research publications and presentations." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48041859)) "I use Inkscape very often for graphics work and it works great for me." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48044375)) "I still find Inkscape and svg + pdf_tex to be the easiest pattern." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48654646)) - Capable, serious open-source app (4 comments): "Krita and Inkscape are both serious and competent apps with their own principles and features" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49959722)) "FreeCAD is becoming like Blender and Inkspace - incredibly robust and capable" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47587913)) "I use Inkscape on Mac almost every day and lately hit very few bugs." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48044226)) ## What people warn about - Messy or rewritten SVG output (5 comments): "unless you explicitly export as plain 1.1 compatible SVG you will likely get an SVG with some cherry picked SVG2 features" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46320822)) "It messes up all my formatting and uses its own weird formatting, with line breaks between attributes." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48041045)) "almost inevitably creates really messy SVGs with a lot of transforms" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48041137)) - Slow, crashes on complex files (4 comments): "Inkscape is basically the only good editor on Linux and it easily runs out of memory and crashes for complex images" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46241317)) "takes so long just to show the main UI that the developers didn't think anything of adding a splash screen" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46383493)) "The canvas itself has performance regressions, especially prominent on Windows." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48049854)) - Long-standing bugs and regressions (4 comments): "a feature that worked fine before that got broken years ago and stayed broken" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48047588)) "Right now I have a workflow breaking bug in Inkscape which was fixed last year on main but hasn't made it to a release yet." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47659640)) "the calligraphy pen there seems to be even worse than before and worse than even in 1.4.4" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48047840)) - Awkward next to commercial tools (4 comments): "They're mostly /fine/ but it's one of the weaker software categories in FOSS-alternatives IMO." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46458780)) "None of the Inkscape devs are invested in Freehand's keyboard shortcuts and working techniques" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46511346)) "I'm sick of Gimp, Krita, and Inkscape being the best Linux and open source have to offer." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49959674)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [SVG Path Editor](https://hackerapproved.com/p/svg-path-editor.md): 8 recommend - [VectorPea](https://hackerapproved.com/p/vectorpea.md): 5 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Inkscape", https://hackerapproved.com/p/inkscape/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).