Microsoft Visio is a very popular diagramming software for Windows used for drawing flowcharts, network diagrams, charts etc. In Linux/Ubuntu there are two best alternatives available to Visio – Dia and yED.
Table of Contents
Dia
Dia is an open-source, free diagramming software with verity of features. You can use it to draw flowcharts, circuit diagrams, UML diagrams, ERD diagrams and many more. It uses SVG graphics for drawing. Your drawing files can be exported as various popular file formats such as svg, png, vdx, wmf, jpeg etc.
How to Install
To install Dia in Ubuntu, Mint, elementary, Debian using terminal, open terminal and run below command.
sudo apt-get install dia
To launch Dia on GNome, go to Applications -> Graphics -> Dia
To launch using Dash in Ubuntu, search for Dia
Here is a screenshot of Dia running in Ubuntu
Links
- Website: dia
- Download for other Linux distributions: download
- Source: dia source
yEd
yEd is a powerful diagramming multipurpose application which can be used to create high quality diagrams. You can create diagrams manually. One of the unique feature of yEd is to import external data for analysis and its automatic layout arranging algorithm.
How to Install
To install yEd follow below steps:
-
- Go to yEd website.
- Download the yEd-3.13_64-bit_setup.sh.
- Change the *.sh file attribute to make it executable.
- Go to the directory and run below command:
./yEd-3.13_64-bit_setup.sh
To install using Ubuntu Software Center, search yEd.
To launch yEd on GNome, go to Applications -> Other -> yEd Graph Editor
To launch using Dash, search for yEd
Note: yEd needs Java Runtime Environment to run. Make sure you have JRE installed in your system.
Here is a screen shot of yEd running in Ubuntu
