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The LinuxQuest For CSPposted last year, edited last month by family_staralternate_emailkylieneko

clickbait title: Clip Studio Paint under Linux is a Hard Mode Project

There's lots of information out there about whether CSP does or does not work under WINE.

And as far as I can tell, Your Mileage May Vary.

I debated whether or not to even make this blog post, but people did express interest in knowing whether or not I got it working. I then debated whether or not to make this a members-only hidden post because I can't promise what worked for me will work for anyone else. I decided to slap a warning on and put it out there, because if it does happen to work or at least be useful, then it's out there.

Bottom Line, Up Front

If CSP is the only thing holding you back from a Linux transition and you haven't yet evaluated Krita, you should really, really evaluate it and figure out what, if anything, you'd be giving up besides some Time.

If there are features missing from Krita, getting CSP working seems Plausible, and I was able to get the version and features I use tested and working, but I can't promise results for you.

Update 2026-02-13: Although I have the app running and things generally work, there's still some Weirdness that has made it a non-starter for making pieces from scratch. Doing little touch ups and accessing my old files? Fine. But there's just something not quite right and I've been sticking with an old Windows lappy while I need to use CSP. It would be nice if they just made a flatpak; there's an Android version, so it can't be too impossible to port to native. If they ever did, I might actually consider upgrading. I sure won't until then.

The Scene

I cannot emphasize enough that this is a Works For Me, And I'm Not Entirely Sure Why situation. Others report getting it working with different settings. Others have not got it working at all. Therefore, as the open source usually says, this all comes with no guarantee, even the implied guarantee that it will work under the exact same scenario.

I use CSP 1.x, with no intent to ever upgrade. My hobby is not making me money and there are no features I need. I'll forgo the unique features I want from CSP and switch to Krita if ever they cut off 1.x users. (Or if Krita ever implements those features)

  • Wacom CTH610 Tablet
  • Linux Mint Debian Edition 6 'Faye'
    • with some tweaks that I don't think are relevant but I'll at least mention for completeness: backports versions of kernel, GPU and MESA drivers
  • Cinnamon (default) Desktop
    • which is at time of posting is still using X11
  • Wine 9.0 via the WineHQ repo for Debian
  • Winetricks manually installed and updated from source, because the Debian package is so old the errors for download links being outdated are obfuscated by not actually checking the content beyond a hash mismatch and a -- in this case -- wrong information about that Possibly Being Okay. (HTML 404 pages are not updated versions of installers)
  • Clip Studio Paint 1.9.4 for initial install
  • Clip Studio Paint 1.13.2 for upgrade
  • Other versions, especially NEWER versions than 1.x, or people using login instead of old serial keys, may not work without extra effort. I've been using a serial since it was called Manga Studio, never made an account, don't want to buy anything on the store etc. So I can't speak to that. But again some people say they got it working, some people say they've never got it working.
    • Honestly, even if you use a serial, if you can find a distribution partner offloading old valid physical install discs with serials it's probably a good idea to grab a second one and not risk hosing your main copy.

I setup a WINE prefix for CSP. You should too. WINE prefixes are great -- you can tweak settings to get one app working without toasting another app that you already got working. I got the list of winetricks dlls from a reddit thread that was relatively recent.

If you're going to use a version later than 1.x or use 1.x but login for product activation, it sounds like you will also need to install WebView, which is not (currently) available via winetricks.

# Depending on the size of screen/window
# you're viewing this on, there may be
# horizontal scroll that is not immediately
# obvious.

# Setup the terminal so we don't have to type this before every command.
export WINEPREFIX=$HOME/WinePrefixes/clip-studio-paint

# This will setup your new prefix. While you're in there, set the Windows
# version to **8.1.**
winecfg

# Handy install of things we need to function. '-q' makes it an auto install.
# The thread thought d3dcompiler_47 might be optional/unnecessary. I didn't feel like
# testing that.
winetricks -q dlls dotnet472 d3dcompiler_47 gdiplus vcrun2019

# Install the version that let you register your serial without logging in.
wine CSP_194w_setup.exe

# STOP: Run Clip Studio. WINE probably added a .desktop file for it, and it may be in your
# menu now.
# Register your serial.
# Close all CS apps then resume.

# Upgrade to latest version of 1.x.
wine CSP_1132w_setup.exe

# Should be good to go.

I copied the .desktop file WINE created and modified it to start CSP directly, as the launcher seems to run quite slow. I also modified to have Categories=Graphics;Wine; to both files so they sort nicely into the relevant bins on the menu.

I did not, as had been reported elsewhere, have to install any tablet apps in the WINE prefix. Which is great, because I'm pretty sure the tablet I'm using was still using a kernel-mode driver and probably wouldn't have worked under WINE. However, version 1.9 was glitchy and I couldn't draw (possibly needed different libraries than I installed for 1.13 but also wasn't erroring out?), so the upgrade step was essential as 1.13.2 did function in trial mode, I just couldn't register my serial as they don't want you doing it that way anymore.

The steps along the way

When WINE was set to Windows 10, no (tested) version of the app worked at all. Windows 7 worked, but then the app complains that some features might break because they dropped official Win 7 support in the final days of 1.x. 8.1 worked and made everyone happy even though officially the docs say unsupported.

If you use a prefix manager like Lutris or Bottles, I can't promise this will work. I never tried Bottles, but with Lutris the only time I got the app not to crash was when I disabled FSR. But I still didn't have pen pressure working. By that point though, I wasn't taking good notes and decided to do everything by hand, so it might be that I just needed to switch the Windows version down to 8.1, as it defaults to 10 in the profile currently on the Lutris site.

Since I got the trial of 1.13 working in the manually hand-jammed prefix, with pen pressure, I rolled with that instead of going back to Lutris to replicate the environment. It could also be a factor of the Proton-GE that Lutris used by default wasn't ready for tablet input the way Wine 9.0, a recent release that the Protons will catch up to in their own time, was. I'm not being paid enough to drill down all the way here. You can tell Lutris to use your system install of WINE, and I had done in prior tests but I'm not sure I did in the final "app actually launched without crashing" run. It was getting dicey and I moved on to a different process.

And this is why I stress that what worked for me may not work for you: presumably the person who made the Lutris installer had it working, and there is no reason to believe that it didn't work for them. But it ended up not working for me. And the possible causes are legion.

Other Notes

The Linux input system for tablets does not seem to have a similar concept to the "Pan/Scroll" mode. I don't know if that was a Wacomism or a Windows Ink thing, I just know that I liked it on my pen button and I'll need to configure some things to get that back.

Why Not Krita?

Krita is great and I had it installed, along with Inkscape (which, I admit, I mostly used from the command line . . . but anyways) on my Windows computer. I am quite aware of it and have used it, though most of what I've deigned to share online has been done in CSP.

And I don't intend to necessarily never switch to Krita -- I want to. CSP's monetization model is repulsive, and a flip from the "buy once forever" selling point. On top of the Android and iOS versions being subscription-only and the cash shop for assets (oh sure there's plenty of free ones), the new model is Subscribe-But-If-You-Stop-Paying-It-Reverts-To-The-Newest-Perpetual-License-You-Had-If-Any. You don't pay for updates, you pay to rent the updates. You cannot buy a perpetual N.x license, you can buy a perpetual N.0 license. That's right -- you have to rent the updates to the perpetual version you bought, you aren't even entitled to fixes for the version you bought. The "Tips" tutorial site used to be quite good, but over the years it's gotten full of trash submissions since there's cash prizes involved and it's hard to even find anything because the topic categories are too broad. It's enshittification all the way down. Oh and the call-home DRM has been upgraded to call-home-with-a-login-account-for-better-tracking.

But here are some things that Krita can't do:

  • Vector layers using arbitrary brushes and pen pressure.
    • Krita's vector layers support what the SVG spec supports.
    • Being able to nudge my inking lines a bit without doing CTRL+Z redraw x1000 is an amazing time saver. And I can do it when I come back to the drawing later and notice things I hadn't, without trying to erase only the one bit.
  • Draft (and other) layer exclusion from export
    • This isn't a deal breaker but it's really neat and handy to be able to mark some layers "draft" and filter them from exports.

Things Krita can do but doesn't have an enjoyable UX:

  • Comic tools
    • You can absolutely mimic what CSP does for comic panels, but you'd be hand-jamming what CSP does in a few clicks and manages for you.
  • Layer recoloring
    • Krita can apply all sorts of effects to layers! But all I want to do is sometimes turn my line sketches a different color, which is 1-3 clicks in CSP depending on if I want to use the same color as last time or extra clicks for picking a different one.

That's my list anyways. I may have forgot some. Others may have other reasons. Others may find missing those features or having a more complicated workflow works for them.

For me this was worth the effort to ensure 1) access to my old art original files and 2) being able to make the move off CSP on my own terms and time.

clipstudiopaintlinux
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