The history of Krita is briefly mentioned in the interview - I think I first tried Krita around 2005 or so. At the time, it was basically KDE's GIMP as part of

The history of Krita is briefly mentioned in the interview - I think I first tried Krita around 2005 or so. At the time, it was basically KDE's GIMP as part of KDE's productivity suite (which kind of sucked anyways). That put it in an awkward position of competing head-on with the leading Linux image editor, targeting mostly the same user base, and that basically made it unattractive to users. With a focus on digital painting, however, it has a great niche. It now performs great on an area that GIMP never really focused on and it's a very feasible goal to be on par with or better than Photoshop on that particular aspect. That way it can be "a great painting program" rather than "Photoshop but free".