Need help installing blender

Sorry this is all new to me and I have Ubuntu and I really don’t get the guide. More of a person who needs it explained to me in that persons own words if possible would be great. I have the cd but not sure what to do once I put it in my tower.

Wait… you need help installing Blender or installing Ubuntu?

If you need help installing Ubuntu, go elsewhere (or wait for someone else to respond), if you need help installing blender, there’s a much easier way. First off, I’m not sure where you got the CD, but the easiest way to install it is this:

Open up Terminal (it’s in the main menu somewhere, sorry but I’m not on a ubuntu machine right now so I can’t tell you exactly which menu.

Type this:


sudo apt-get install blender

Should go and grab all the files, install them for you and create the appropriate shortcuts, if not, post back. And you’ll need to enter your password when asked for it.

Yeah, I’m a bit like that too. It’s always easier to follow what someone else did.

Okay, so I don’t have Ubuntu installed at the moment, so I don’t know what’s on the CD, or what format it’s in. But here’s how I went about it.

I’m running freespire, so the first thing I did was open up a console window and type “sudo apt-get install blender” - this then downloaded and instaled Blender for me from freespire’s repositories. So far, so good. Only problem was that their repository only had Blender 2.42 in it. Hmm.

Next, I downloaded the binary version of 2.44 from Blender’s home page. It was a tgz file I think. I then opened the archive with Ark and extraced it all to a directory under my home directory (/home/enhzflep/blender-2.44-linux-glibc232-py24-i386) from there it was just a matter of entering this directory and typing “./blender”

Of course, you can also edit the applications menu (in KDE: Control Panel->Look and Feel->Desktop->Panels, then select the Menus tab and hit the button called “Edit K Menu”) and add a new app to it. Tell it where the file’s located and what it’s called AND make sure you tick the box titled “run in console” - this opens up a console window when starting blender so you can see any error messages that Blender creates.

I guess Gnome would be a bit different, but can’t try it out to describe the process. I hope this helps you out.

Simon

Yea I was talking about installing Blender to Ubuntu sorry for sounding so confusing but will try it out thanks

Ok well I went into the terminal and typed in sudo apt-get install blender and it said couldn’t find blender which is odd cause I have a disk of it. So not sure what exactly I need to do if it isn’t running right now maybe cuz I am running a old Ubuntu with no internet

apt-get downloads and installs packages from the internet, make sure you are using feisty fawn (the latest stable distro). it is almost imposable to ceep ubuntu running well without an internet connection

for blender, just download the linux tar from blender.org, extract, put folder in the home directory and run from here, but you will probably be missing some dependency’s

Tango, I’m pretty sure that the blender available in the ubuntu repos is version 2.43. On Fedora I got the 64bit version of blender 2.44 installed with a simple ‘yum install blender’. One of the reasons I’m using Fedora now is cuz of the outdated stuff in the ubuntu repos. That and KDE of course :wink:

Since you have no internet ericson, there’s the make install method, which consists of compiling from source, and is probably not something you want to jump into just yet, and as hessies said, the unpacking and running straight from the unpacked folder… To find out the missing dependencies you’ll need to run blender from the terminal and see what’s missing. That would consist of typing cd /home/blender/ (or cd /wherever you unpacked the files) and then typing in the name of the blender run file. I have discovered that linux is a pain in the ass when you have no internet connection however.

I assume you’re using 32bit ubuntu?

well i haven’t really unpacked the cd yet i just put it into the computer and its on my desktop saying blender pack…i put the disk into my moms labtop she has xp and it sent me online to the company i bought this disk from which is span-tech and downloaded all the files for me i didn’t think it would be that simple when i have linux 5.26 i think that is what it is right now i am gonna use xubuntu downloading it from their site and putting it on my flash drive since i don’t have internet at my house or should i use my flash drive and grab the necessary files from the blender site?

Ouch, really? I don’t have a Ubuntu install up here, but that’s too bad. Do the repositories eventually check back with the software manager, or is it blenders responsibility to notify the repositories of a new version?

Ericson: Grab the files from the blender site as well (would be in the tar.gz format), but it is possible that there are certain dependencies (glibc 2.3.2 is one) that you will need to install separate to blender, which can be a pain if you have no internet connection on the linux pc. There are also packages that are static mesagl packages, which i’m not sure but that may mean they will run without any additional requirements. That’s simply on the download page of blender.org. You’ll just have to see how it goes when you try to run it. Also, is the cd of blender you have version 2.44? I’m wondering why you’d buy it when it’s a 11mb download - maybe because of your internet situation.

Tango: The (official) repos are managed by their respective distros I presume. I imagine the Blender devs don’t need to notify every single linux vendor when a new version is ready, so it’s the responsibility of the distro and its users to try and keep up to date. Of course there may be an unofficial repo that has the latest version of blender, but I dunno where that would be.

I was quite surprised to find the Ubuntu repos rather lacking. The best version of Thunderbird for example was 1.5 something. Also, Gnome is imo rather a limited interface, and I reckon people should try out kde, but not kubuntu, as that is not the nicest implementation of kde. Sabayon (lite edition) or Fedora KDE are good to see what kde has to offer.

tango,

Ubuntu is a stable distro, which means that there won’t be version updates during it’s lifetime (the versions are kept stable). Updates happen with a new Ubuntu version, which comes out twice yearly.

So if you want to use the latest Blender (as a blenderhead you probably will), just do what was suggested already, download the appropriate linux binary from blender.org and use that. It should work fine. If not, you might need to install some libraries that Blender needs, this time with apt-get. Ask again, should you need help with that.

Good luck,
Sanne

Ah, interesting, I never realized that the repositories were locked on release of a new OS version. I figured as software was updated, and “stable” builds were released (take Blender 2.44, for example) that the repositories were also updated.

With that being said, I assume the security repositories are never locked and always updated… correct?

And, I’m not running Ubuntu as my main machine, so I don’t need to worry about it :). Thanks anyway though.

It depends on the design of the distro in question. There are distros (as far as I know) that update applications as soon as they are stable. There are advantages and disadvantages to both models, so people can choose what fits them best.

Usually you can say, new application versions may mean new bugs, so there are situations where a long stable cycle is preferred, like on servers, or on company desktops.

I assume the security repositories are never locked and always updated… correct?

That’s correct. The stable versions get no version update, but of course they get bug fixes. But you usually don’t have to fear about new bugs getting introduced by this procedure.

And, I’m not running Ubuntu as my main machine, so I don’t need to worry about it :). Thanks anyway though.

Haha! :). But well, it may be interesting for others also (I hope).