Updated October 14, 2026. Written for FigCraft 0.5.1 (what changed since). Prices in USD.
| Option | How it runs on Linux | Account | Your installed fonts | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Figma in the browser | Chrome, Firefox or Edge | Figma account | No | Starter free (3 files); Professional $16 a month per Full seat billed yearly |
| figma-linux (unofficial) | Electron wrapper around Figma: Snap, AppImage, .deb, .rpm | Figma account | With a manual step | Same as Figma |
| Penpot | Browser, or self-hosted | Penpot account or your server | Uploaded per team | $0 Professional |
| FigCraft desktop | Native app: AppImage, .deb, .rpm, Flatpak, tarball | None | Yes | Free |
Figma in the browser is the real Figma
Figma's downloads page offers desktop apps for macOS, Windows and Windows on Arm, nothing for Linux. Its system requirements still list Linux as supported: any distribution that runs Chrome 120 or later, Firefox 128 ESR or later, or Edge 121 or later. Your files, comments and libraries are the same ones your colleagues open on macOS and Windows.
Two Linux details matter. Figma's canvas needs WebGL (WebGPU for shader effects), and on Linux, OS and graphics driver updates are often needed to keep its performance up. And fonts: in the browser, Figma reaches the fonts on your computer through its font installer, and Figma doesn't support additional fonts on Linux or ChromeOS. A brand font installed on your machine won't appear in Figma's font list; the fonts Figma serves itself, such as Google Fonts, do.
The free Starter plan covers one team with 3 files, prototypes included. A Professional Full seat is $16 a month billed yearly, or $20 billed monthly.
The unofficial figma-linux app
figma-linux is a community project that wraps Figma's web app in an Electron window, with Snap, AppImage, .deb and .rpm packages. It gives Figma its own icon and window, and local fonts work in the Snap version after a one-line symlink step. It is still Figma over the internet with your Figma account, and its latest release, v0.11.5, came out on October 10, 2024. If the browser tab works for you, the wrapper adds little.
FigCraft: a native design app for Linux
FigCraft is an open-source design tool built to work like Figma, written in Rust and released for Linux alongside Windows, macOS and FreeBSD. It has frames and auto layout, components with variants, variables, vector networks, prototyping and Dev Mode code, with Figma's shortcuts. On Linux that means:
- No account and no internet connection needed. Designs are .figcraft files on your disk.
- It uses the fonts installed on your system, alongside the open fonts it ships with.
- It opens .fig files saved from Figma, on a best-effort basis, and exports PNG, JPG, WebP, SVG and PDF.
- Builds for x86_64 and ARM64, plus a RISC-V tarball.
The limits are real. Its developers put FigCraft at about half of the way to replacing Figma, live collaboration is a preview with no accounts, and the .fig importer hasn't been tested on files from real projects. FigCraft as a free Figma alternative lists what's there and what's missing.
Installing FigCraft on Linux
Get the file for your distribution from the download page, which links straight to the GitHub release (the x86_64 AppImage is about 81 MB). Then, in the folder you saved it to:
| Package | Command |
|---|---|
| AppImage (any distribution) | chmod +x figcraft-0.6.0-linux-x86_64.AppImage, then run it |
| Debian, Ubuntu, Mint | sudo apt install ./figcraft-0.6.0-linux-x86_64.deb |
| Fedora, RHEL, openSUSE | sudo dnf install ./figcraft-0.6.0-linux-x86_64.rpm (zypper on openSUSE) |
| Flatpak | flatpak install --user figcraft-0.6.0-linux-x86_64.flatpak |
Swap x86_64 for aarch64 on an ARM machine. The AppImage can update itself with AppImageUpdate.
Try the interface in a browser first
FigCraft in the browser is the same editor compiled to WebAssembly, and it runs in Chrome or Firefox on Linux with no install. It uses WebGPU where the browser offers it and falls back to WebGL2; if the canvas misbehaves, open it with WebGL2 forced. It is a preview: it can't open, save or export files, and it only has its bundled fonts, so use it to see whether the interface suits you, then install the app for real work.
Penpot, if your team is leaving Figma too
Penpot runs in any browser, so Linux is a first-class platform, and its Professional plan is $0. Fonts you own can be uploaded for the whole team, which gets around the font problem without a desktop app. It can also be self-hosted with Docker on a Linux server. How it compares with FigCraft for moving Figma files, teamwork and prototypes is in Penpot vs FigCraft.
Which to use
If your team works in Figma, stay in Figma in Chrome or Firefox: shared files, comments and libraries are where your colleagues are, and a Figma link only opens in Figma. The one awkward case is a brand font that only exists on your machine. Figma on Linux can't use it, so ask whoever owns the design system for a Google Fonts fallback, or do the type-heavy work on a Mac or Windows machine.
If the work is your own (side projects, client mockups you hand over as PNG or PDF, learning), a native app is more comfortable: download the FigCraft AppImage, run it, and press F to draw your first frame. The other Craft apps also ship Linux builds; what are the Craft apps lists them.