Installation Issues in Kubuntu 17.04

Greetings to all,

Let me begin by asking your forgiveness for the fairly basic nature of my issue, however I am brand new to Blender and, to be honest, still fairly green in the worlds of Linux. :confused:

I am running Kubuntu 17.04 with the KDE/Plasma desktop environment 5.94. Yesterday I downloaded Blender 2.78c for Linux. I extracted the files and placed them in their folder in my home directory. I copied the .desktop file and placed it on my desktop.

When I follow the directions provided in the ReadMe file and launch Blender through its executable, it starts up normally (or at least what appears to me to be normal), however, if I try to launch Blender through its .desktop file, as I do with all of the other programs I have installed, I receive an error message from Plasma:

KDEInit could not launch Blender.
Could not open library ā€˜libkdeinit5_blenderā€™
Cannot load library libkdeinit5_blender:Cannot open shared object file:No such file or directory.

The error message indicates a problem loading a dynamic library because Kubuntu (in my case) doesnā€™t know where to find it. I have tried to correct the issue by setting the environmental variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH for Blender by creating a .conf file named (amazingly enough) blender.conf in the directory /etc/ld.so.conf.d/ and then running the command ldconfig to update the system with the new library information. This effort has not corrected the underlying issue.

Before proceeding on to do something monumentally stupid, I felt that I should perhaps ask some folks who know Blender well and are proficient with Linux, specifically Ubuntu, what steps I should take to 1) Solve the issue with Blenderā€™s .desktop file so I may use it to launch the program and 2) More fully integrate Blender into my system (my overarching goal).

Now then, thatā€™s not asking very much on an otherwise peaceful Sunday morning, is it? :eyebrowlift:

Thank you for your time and for whatever assistance and guidance you can offer.

Hi.
Here using KDE/Plasma 4, some things may be different.
Go to the desktop and right click on your blender launcher icon and choose ā€œPropertiesā€. Go to the ā€œApplicationā€ tab. In the ā€œCommandā€ field press the ā€œBrowseā€ button and go to the path where you have the Blender folder and you choose within that folder the ā€œblenderā€ binary file. Now you click the ā€œOkā€ button below.
The properties dialog should look something like this (image taken from the internet):

After that, you can associate .blend files to be opened with that version of blender. You open Dolphin file explorer and right click on a .blend file, ā€œOpen With ā€¦ā€ > ā€œOtherā€¦ā€, and you choose the path to ā€˜blenderā€™ binary from the small icon of one folder on the top right. Remember to check the last box ā€œRemember program association for this type of fileā€ (or something like this, my system is in Spanish)

You can also create launchers from the properties of the global KDE application launcher (right click in KDE launcher menu, Edit applications). Once you created the launcher there and save changes, you can drag the launcher to the desktop (Copy).

Thank you for your reply Yafu. Apologies for taking a while to reply.

Ā”Perfecto, seƱor! Your solution to my issue was exactly right. To be honest, I feel a little sheepish as I should have tried your solution first before making all kinds of modifications to system files. But at least I stopped after one, fairly minor change.

It is as my dear High School Spanish Professor, SeƱora Pratt was so fond of saying: ā€œPoco a poco aprendemosā€.

And I would like to complement you on your command of writing in English. I am an official Grammar Nazi and I find absolutely nothing in your reply to pick nits with. LOL. I should ask: Are you familiar with the coloquial expression ā€˜to pick nitsā€™?

Thank you once again.

My respect and very best regards,

Renaissance Man

Good to know that the information has been useful to you!
ā€œPoco a poco aprendemosā€. Of course, you should be patient while learning Linux and its desktops.

Hehe, not really familiar with colloquial expressions in English. And for writing I use a lot of Google Translator.

Best regards.

SeƱora Pratt was a very wise woman. I am amazed how much wiser she becomes as I grow in experience. She was a strict disciplinarian in the classroom, but she was passionate about the Spanish language and about teaching. Requiescat in pace, SeƱora.

And just to share with you and improve your knowledge of English slightly, a nit is the egg of a louse (the singular of lice). They are usually deposited on a hair shaft. Thus, to remove them, or ā€˜pickā€™ them off of a personā€™s head is very tedious and requires exceptionally close attention to detail. As an idiomatic, or colloquial phrase it has come to mean to find fault in a petty way.

I too am a huge fan of Google Translate. What a marvelous tool for writing! I look forward to the day when we will be able to carry a device with us that will be able to identify the language being spoken and translate the speakerā€™s language into the recipientā€™s language and vice versa. Like the universal translator tool common to the Star Trek series. In the meanwhile, I commend you to the website for The Free Dictionary http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/. This is a tool that is not only a dictionary in the classic sense (and a darn good one too), but a source for explanation of various idiomatic and colloquial expressions. I hope you find it useful.

Best regards,

Frank