ChemDraw is not available for Linux but there are some alternatives that runs on Linux with similar functionality. The best Linux alternative is Chemaxon Marvin, which is free. If that doesn't suit you, our users have ranked more than 10 alternatives to ChemDraw and nine of them are available for Linux so hopefully you can find a suitable replacement. Other interesting Linux alternatives to ChemDraw are ChemDoodle, JChemPaint, XDrawChem and Molsketch.
Marvin suite is a chemically intelligent desktop toolkit built to help you draw, edit, publish, render, import and export your chemical structures and as well as allowing you to convert between various chemical and graphical file formats.
If you are looking for a chemical sketcher or an alternative to your current chemical drawing application, there is no better choice than ChemDoodle. ChemDoodle works on all operating systems (both 32 and 64 bit), has one of the largest feature sets in the industry, has the most...
Closest thing to ChemDraw functionality and, unlike ChemDraw, it works natively on Linux. Sadly, the author has chosen a frustrating atom-first drawing mechanic which is hugely counterintuitive. But if you can learn to accept it, ChemDoodle is a respectable ChemDraw alternative (unless you need to draw pi complexes).
Functionally equivalent and very similar in features. Very similar layout makes it very easy for chemists to switch
JChemPaint (or JCP for short here) is the editor and viewer for 2D chemical structures developed using the Chemistry Development Kit (CDK).
XDrawChem is a free software program for drawing chemical structural formulas, available for Unix and Mac OS. It is distributed under the GNU GPL. In Microsoft Windows this program is called WinDrawChem.
More simply for use in class
A 2D molecular editing tool for GNU/Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. Its goal is to help you draw molecules quick and easily. Of course your creations can be exported afterwards in high quality in a number of vector and bitmap formats.
BKChem is a free (as in free software :o) chemical drawing program. It was conceived and written by Beda Kosata and is currently maintained by Reinis Danne.
BKchem is an old attempt at replacing some of ChemDraw's functionality. It succeeded partially in providing some of ChemDraw's very core chemical structure drawing features. Unfortunately, BKchem has seen no new development since 2010, leaving it in limbo.
Very usefull software. You can paste images created with BKChem in a text processor or another open source graphical software like InkScape.
The Gnome Chemistry Utils include six chemistry related programs:
MollyCule is a completely free Open Source Chemistry visualisation program for MacOS, Linux and Windows. MollyCule is designed to be a nice, easy to use program to help ordinary people who want to explore Chemistry.
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Simple structures are needed.