After having some problems with 2.64 crashing on XP I decided to dual boot my computer with Ubuntu and the crashes have been eliminated. So whats the problem? Well I downloaded the tar.bz2 file from the Blender website and, from the few sites I’ve found on installing blender, it seems that it is not ‘installed’ but more like when you would download an old version of blender in the zip file format, it is simply running once each time. To this end when I add Blender to the Launcher it is just a dudd icon that doesn’t work.
So using the downloaded tar.bz2 file is there a way to actaully install it so that when I view blender files in the folders I can open them from that folder and it will recognise what package to open it with?
There is no “installing” in Ubuntu.
There are just installed packages Ubuntu is aware of. If something doesn’t come as package there’s no package awareness and no dependency awareness.
The only difference between the binary and a packaged release is that the binary does not solve dependencies with libraries itself, and the location where the binary is.
I followed this to install the package but it won’t launch when you click on the icon in the Launcher just does nothing. Having done some more reading I can see that it isn’t as simple as just installing a package.
as arexma wrote, there’s no need to actually install the blender in ubuntu - the only thing it would do for you is that it would:
-copy it into part of filesystem reserved for “installed” binaries
-solve dependencies for you
-add launcher file to the menu structure of menus
while the last two are done directly by the package maintainer (person who packed the software), not by installation itself…
To install it in the “proper way” you would have to pack it yourself or wait for someone to pack it for you…
I would recommend not to mess with copying binaries into filesystem* - if you want to be able to run blender from terminal without specifying path, just place a symlink into /usr/bin folder (pointing to the executable placed in place of which you are aware of, and which you are able to update whenever you want)…
If you want just icon in your desktop enviroment, you can create app file in /usr/share/applications (for example look in the ones on your filesystem- they are just text files)(EDIT This is the proper way of adding application into “list of user applications”, usually done by the package manager(if the application file was put on it’s place by package maintainer)… You dont need that for creating link ie on desktop…)
on the other hand if you followed the guide, it should work - look whether there’s any mistake in the paths - to pin the blender to the unity, I guess you need to launch app and then pin it (it would remember the location from which the binary was launched), but the guide does not create regular file which stand for the app in desktop enviroment…
*though there’s nothing wrong about it as long as you remember what you have done, and if you understand what you’ve done (and it does not seem that no. 1 applies, nor that no.2 would apply for a long time)
This tutorial you followed is horrible. It’s one of the problems with big FOSS communities. Lot’s of the information is bottom up and not top down.
If a solution, like the one you followed works, but isn’t good, those people with no plan just following it, rate it good, although it’s a bad idea.
It’s best to use symlinks in linux to get binaries where you want them, powerful tools.
If you want Blender in the dock, or on the desktop, just create a shortcut to the ./blender binary.
I have no idea how it works on Unity in Ubuntu though, I ditched it a while back because the whole ship is under full steam, but the captain seems drunk
You unpack the blender binary wherever you want. Once you resolved the library dependencies, you have your blender somewhere like:
~/home/tomjelfs/blender_2.64/
just symlink it via:
ln -s /usr/bin/blender264 /home/tomjelfs/blender_2.64/blender
similarily you can do:
ln -s /usr/bin/blender259 /home/tomjelfs/blender_2.59/blender
…
Whenever you type blender264 now in the console, blender will start.
Symbolic links are a bit like windows shortcuts, but more powerful.
As for a desktop/dock icon to start it, just create a “shortcut” named "Blender 2.64"to ~/home/tomjelfs/blender_2.64/blender.Check online how to do that.
Finally associate .blend files with ~/home/tomjelfs/blender_2.64/blender.
The result should be:
“blender264” runs your unpacked blender from the console
You should have a “Blender 2.64” icon in your menu/dock
doubleclick on .blend files should open in your unpacked Blender 2.64
Well I ended up opening the terminal and typing in blender to see if it would load and the terminal kindly told me that “blender is not installed” and to then told me the correct code to install it. Then when I went into the dashboard and typed Blender it now came up with a lovely big blender icon for me to click which I then simply dragged onto the launch bar, also blend files open directly in Blender now.
btw the package in ubuntu repositories is quite old… I though the entire time that it was the reason you wanted to “install” the downloaded binaries (yeah, mine mistake)…
