Is there an alternative to Microsoft Office Visio?

Question

Are there any alternatives to Microsoft Office Visio for Ubuntu?

score 51 · Answer 1 · edited Jul 01 '14 at 16:33

51

I especially like yEd.

DIA is unusable in comparison. I still wonder how I managed to document my Bachelor's Thesis using it. Try aligning objects in DIA, try creating any diagram so that it doesn't look like it was done in 3 minutes.

edited Jul 01 '14 at 16:33

guntbert

13,485

answered May 02 '11 at 02:04

julkiewicz

671

Oh, you are right, yEd is far better. The only (and unmeaning) disadvantage is that it's not in GTK+. – Alfredo Hernández May 02 '11 at 16:13
Thanks for your good solution, I have to draw network maps time to time (Network node map for each room and apartment). – Nov 07 '12 at 03:35
8

It looks like a rant against DIA. – Luiggi Mendoza Nov 28 '12 at 02:10
2
yEd might be an "alternatives to Microsoft Office Visio" that may be used on Ubuntu (the Java or HTML flavour, maybe ?). * It looks like it promises to bring the benefits of graphviz with mouse-based editing. * But it doesn't look like it's "for Ubuntu". And it's also non-free (as in freedom and as in beer), not open-source.

Stéphane Gourichon

Apr 11 '16 at 16:45

Just found https://www.yworks.com/products/yed/download that offers "yEd for Linux (72.9 MB)" with a licence agreement prompt https://www.yworks.com/resources/yed/license.html . It's proprietary software built partly on open-source libraries (Apache, MIT, BSD license). The download includes a java runtime environment. – Stéphane Gourichon Apr 11 '16 at 17:01

score 22 · Answer 2 · answered May 02 '11 at 16:57

22

I like LibreOffice Draw, its not as colorful as Visio, but works for me.

answered May 02 '11 at 16:57

Willian Girhad

697

Awsome, I didn't notice that Libre has such cool tool :) thanks – Mazeryt Oct 31 '15 at 17:48

FloatingRock · Answer 3 · 2014-10-03T10:39:26.260

12

PENCIL ROCKS!

And it's compatible with Windows and Macs too. Check it out

edited Oct 03 '14 at 10:39

answered Dec 06 '12 at 04:42

FloatingRock

221

Sorry pencil does not work well on ubuntu. Tried it, some objects will not be visible while exporting and exporting does not work also for some formats. – prdatur Feb 07 '13 at 14:50

score 11 · Answer 4 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:23

Inkscape

I've primarily used Inkscape. It's a very different UI, but it works well and it's a powerful tool. Output can (depending on input) look as professional as necessary.

In Inkscape, use the "Create diagram connector". It has the option to "Make connector avoid selected objects". If you draw a connector, then select the object you want to avoid, edit the connector and finally click the button to avoid that object, you can use smart connectors that will not overlap the different elements of your box. In practice, I find the easiest way to do this is to:

Draw a connector
Deselect the connector by clicking the object you want to avoid
Hold SHIFT and double-click the connector you just drew
Choose "Make connector avoid selected objects"

Also see this question and answers: Nice network diagram editor?

About the other recommendations

I haven't used it much yet, but yEd looks very good.

Alternatively, LibreOffice Draw is a popular piece of software, see other answers. One thing to note is that LibreOffice can now open Visio diagrams, and it lets you edit them. It works well for simple diagrams, not as well for very Visio-idiosyncrasy-intensive ones. It could still be usable with more effort, and in an environment with a lot of existing diagrams, this might be tolerable.

Inkscape would also be my preferred option, but note that it is not as much a diagram drawing tool as it is vector drawing software. DIA and Visio can auto-align and draw smart connections (well, Visio can) between blocks. In Inkscape this would require additional steps, making the design a more cumbersome process, but the results will look excellent. — Tomas, Jan 18 '13 at 08:54
I always had trouble letting the diagram connectors dodge other objects, though I must admit it has been a while since I tried. Just found the "Make connector avoid selected objects" option and got it to work, that is doing what I was implying with "smarter behaviour". Would you mind if I updated your answer a bit, explaining this? — Tomas, Feb 06 '13 at 17:40

Thomas the Tank Engine · Answer 5 · 2020-12-09T09:10:06.683

9

In terms of online solutions, including those already mentioned in this thread, there's

edited Dec 09 '20 at 09:10

answered Apr 17 '13 at 15:38

Thomas the Tank Engine

308

score 8 · Answer 6 · edited Aug 01 '17 at 06:19

Many of the suggestions in other answers are good stand-ins for Visio for general diagramming. One gap I found was the lack of a decent set of network equipment symbols like those found in Visio. So I jumped in and built a set for OpenOffice/LibreOffice, now shipping in Fedora in the vrt-network-equipment package. It's also available to download here if you just want the OO/LibO extension.

Edit: Now also added to extensions.libreoffice.org and extensions.openoffice.org

enter image description here

score 6 · Answer 7 · edited Jan 31 '12 at 21:55

6

I believe a solution that has been completely overlooked for far too long is Visual Paradigm. It's closed source, but it has a free community edition (non-commercial use) and is very stable and polished. Also, the UML only commercial license is only $99.

edited Jan 31 '12 at 21:55

Jjed

14,084

answered Jan 02 '12 at 06:26

user1070090

61

score 4 · Answer 8 · edited Mar 16 '17 at 14:41

4

Gliffy

For online use the site is here

There's also a Chrome app

edited Mar 16 '17 at 14:41

Zanna

72,471

answered Nov 19 '12 at 17:26

Kristofer

384

Unbelievable! I tried many draw apps on Ubuntu, but this Chrome app is the best. – PhatHV Aug 04 '15 at 10:30
Read agreement but couldn't get if it may be used commercially for free :( – kinORnirvana Sep 06 '16 at 12:47

score 3 · Answer 9 · answered May 23 '13 at 01:26

3

I would recommend Lucidchart as a robust alternative. As far as I know, it's the only Linux-compatible option that will import and export Visio documents and stencils.

answered May 23 '13 at 01:26

J M

39

score 3 · Answer 10 · edited Mar 16 '17 at 14:39

3

Install Dia using the Ubuntu Software Centre.

edited Mar 16 '17 at 14:39

Zanna

72,471

answered Apr 28 '11 at 18:46

scouser73

4,344

score 2 · Answer 11 · edited Mar 08 '12 at 12:44

2

I tried Visual Paradigm and I must say that it works beautifully. I am currently going for my BS on EET and i find it really handy and reliable.

edited Mar 08 '12 at 12:44

Javier Rivera

35,444

answered Mar 08 '12 at 04:55

fuzzy dice

31

score 2 · Answer 12 · edited Feb 26 '14 at 08:50

2

In addition to Dia, some good alternatives to Microsoft Visio are Libreoffice Draw, Calligra Flow and yED. There are some online alternatives but most of them have paid subscriptions. There is one online app which provides all the features for free though, its called draw.io. You can check it out!

Btw, you can follow this guide for more information.

edited Feb 26 '14 at 08:50

Luís de Sousa

13,518

answered Feb 26 '14 at 08:18

Saurabh Bansal

164

score 2 · Answer 13 · answered Jan 11 '12 at 22:12

I also like yEd very much: it has a straightforward approach to creating diagrams and lets you work efficiently after a very short while. The quality of the diagrams can be very high: there are advanced alignment functions, custom Icons can be imported (also from Visio) and there are various output formats available.

However, yEd requires an Oracle Sun Java VM, which is not standard e.g. in Ubuntu 11.10. A solution is given in http://yed.yworks.com/support/qa/17. The easiest solution for me was to download and extract the "Zipped yEd Jar" Download and call the Oracle Sun Java explicitely, like:

<path_to_Oracle_Java>/jre1.6.0_30/bin/java -jar <path_to_yEd>/yed-3.8/yed.jar

score 0 · Answer 14 · answered Jan 18 '13 at 08:30

0

I guess most web based solutions would match this answer. Of the web based solutions Creately offers a desktop solution that works on Linux. Although Flash haters might not like it.

answered Jan 18 '13 at 08:30

Nishadha

1

Unfortunately, "Flash" is soon to be a stamped out disease. Like smallpox. – Joel Huebner Jun 17 '20 at 23:39

Is there an alternative to Microsoft Office Visio?

14 Answers14

Inkscape

About the other recommendations

Linked