I am using ubuntu 10.04 with kolourpaint 4.4.2
Recently I saw in windows 7 professional that paint program has feature to show grid & scale in centimetre.
This is useful in drawing geometric sketch.
In my kolourpaint : show grid-ctrl+g in view menu is grayed out.
What can I do ?
Is there a binary available for latest version ( because compiling from source is tedious ) ?

Did you try RTFM?
Obviously not.

okay , I did not see that.
Basically I wanted grid of unit square cm.
All I found is : kruler can help in measuring distances on screen.
How do I do that ?

kruler is just what it's name implies; a simple program for measuring between points on the screen. It has nothing to do with what you want.

I've never used kolourpaint or anything similar. In fact, I had to install it just so I could read the manual for you. But it appears that it simply doesn't have the feature you want. I suggest looking around for other image-editing programs.

I generally use the gimp myself. It does have a customizable grid feature, but it's also much heavier and more complex to use than your simple paint programs. I still don't know how to use many of its features myself (and I really wish sometimes that it had simple shape-drawing tools like the paint programs, instead of having to draw and fill selections all the time).

I saw that in kolourpaint grid is visible at 400% or more.
Kruler can be useful when I am drawing images at 100% zoom level so the actual length can be measured.But grid would be far easier.

I agree with you David the H. . Gimp is powerful but complex.