List of Linux IDEs with GUI designers.

June 22, 2019

Are looking to develop GUI applications on Linux but don’t really want the tediousness of hand coding the interface? Here is a list of IDEs or visual designers with WYSIWYG ability. Many of these tools also run on Windows and/or Mac and can compile for all three platforms with a few including arm and smart devices.

Pure Basic – Commercial Basic IDE for Windows, Mac, Linux.

Lazarus – Open source Free Pascal IDE for Windows, Mac, Linux. I have an example program I wrote if you need a starter.

Gambas3 – Open Source Basic IDE for Linux.

CEED/CEGUI – Open source IDE/GUI designer for C languages geared more for games. Windows, Mac, Linux.

Anjuta DevStudio – Open source IDE with integrated Glade GUI designer C/C++, Python, Vala, etc. for Linux.

Codelite/WXCrafter – Open source IDE C/C++ with WX GUI designer for Linux, Mac, Windows.

MonoDevelop – Open source/Commercial C#, F#, and Basic IDE for Windows, Mac, Linux.

Xojo – Commercial Basic IDE for Windows, Mac, Linux.

QT – Commercial/Open source C++, Python IDE for Windows, Mac, Linux.

Gnome Builder – Open source C, C++, Python, Vala, C#, Rust IDE for Linux.

Boa Constructor – Open source Python IDE for Windows, Mac, Linux.

Netbeans – Open source Java IDE for Windows, Mac, Linux.

Ecere – Open source ec-lang IDE for Windows, Mac, Linux.

Basic for Qt – Commercial/free for Linux, Basic IDE for Windows, Mac, Linux.

pygubu – Open source Python Tk Interface builder inspired by Glade for Linux, Windows, Mac.

FireMonkey – RAD Studio/Delphi Linux GUI tools. Can be PIP installed, DelphiFMX, and used in Python scripts.

Glade – Glade, Linux only, is not an IDE it’s purely a GTK GUI designer, but it can generate interfaces that can be used with a ton of languages on Linux, Mac, and Windows. Here’s a few:

Anubias – Mobile app designer.

KivyMD – A Kivy visual designer for the Python language. Not an IDE but a serious time saver. You can build for Android and iPhone as well as the major desktops. Might be dead, which is a shame.

Godot – Visual designer and property assignment, IDE, and compilers.

This one may seem a bit unorthodox, because you’d typically make games in Godot. The form elements are not as polished as say Gtk or Qt from a desktop perspective but with a little vector design work you can easily make them actually look damned nice. A major benefit, besides having a GUI designer, is the fact you can compile for all platforms, like ARM, Linux, Windows, OS X, Android, and iOS. Pretty cool. You can use Godot’s default language or C, C#, and a couple others. Their language, GD script, is similar to Javascript with Python like undertones.

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