The version of synfig in the repos at time of writing is years out of date.
Installation of the current version from the .deb provided at the synfig website is easy enough, but you may encounter problems when running the application.
Problems
Panels
The right panel/window/dock, which contains many separate elements, is not immediately visible and is all crunched together, making it look mangled, and hiding information.
To fix this simply drag the sizes of the various parts of these components larger so that you can see all their contents. You will unfortunately have to do this each time you start the app as currently it doesn't save the changes.
Input Devices
More critically, you may find that you cannot have any effect upon the canvas. Drawing shapes on the canvas may have no impact at all and you may be stuck with a transparent canvas which you cannot alter.
This is to do with input devices. On the left most panel/window/dock with all the primary tools such as star and rectangle shapes, click file > input devices. Disable all listed input devices, then save and then close the input devices window. See if you can interact with the canvas now. If not, restart the application, recheck the input devices to ensure that they are still disabled (if not, disable any that are enabled or set to 'screen') and try again.
This worked for me.
Installation of the current version from the .deb provided at the synfig website is easy enough, but you may encounter problems when running the application.
Problems
Panels
The right panel/window/dock, which contains many separate elements, is not immediately visible and is all crunched together, making it look mangled, and hiding information.
To fix this simply drag the sizes of the various parts of these components larger so that you can see all their contents. You will unfortunately have to do this each time you start the app as currently it doesn't save the changes.
Input Devices
More critically, you may find that you cannot have any effect upon the canvas. Drawing shapes on the canvas may have no impact at all and you may be stuck with a transparent canvas which you cannot alter.
This is to do with input devices. On the left most panel/window/dock with all the primary tools such as star and rectangle shapes, click file > input devices. Disable all listed input devices, then save and then close the input devices window. See if you can interact with the canvas now. If not, restart the application, recheck the input devices to ensure that they are still disabled (if not, disable any that are enabled or set to 'screen') and try again.
This worked for me.