Doc:2.6/Manual/Introduction/Installing Blender/Linux

Installing on Linux

Download

You can obtain the latest stable version of Blender for Linux from the Blender download page or from your distribution software repository if it provides a Blender package.

Version

Blender for Linux is currently available in 32-bit and 64-bit versions. Users with a 32-bit version of Linux must download the 32-bit version of Blender. Users with a 64-bit version of Linux can choose to use either the 32-bit or 64-bit version of Blender, however you will likely notice an increase in performance when using the 64-bit version of Blender, especially on systems with large amounts of RAM.

To determine whether you have a 32-bit or 64-bit version of Linux, you can either consult your distributions' documentation or use the uname command with the -m option. uname will print system information and the -m option will print the machine hardware name.

• Open a terminal console
  
• Enter the command uname -m

If you have a 32-bit system, uname -m will return a value of i686. A 64-bit system will return a value of x86_64.

Distribution releases

Most major distributions such as Ubuntu, Debian, Open SUSE, Fedora and many others will provide a build of Blender in their software repository that can be accessed through that distributions package manager. If your distribution does not do this, or has not updated their repository to include the latest Blender release, you can install it yourself with the instructions below. Note that depending on your distribution, the version available in the software repository may be outdated compared to the offical release.

Installation

First check if your distribution provides the latest Blender version through its package manager. If it doesn't, download the appropriate version of Blender for Linux from the Blender download page and unpack the archive to a location of your choice.

This will create a directory named blender-VERSION-linux-glibcVERSION-ARCH, where VERSION is the Blender release version, glibcVERSION is the version of glibc required and ARCH is your computer architecture (i686 or x86_64). In this directory you will find the blender binary.

To run Blender,

• Start your X.Org server (if it is not already running)
• Navigate to the Blender directory using a file manager and double click the Blender executable or,
• Open a terminal console, navigate to the Blender directory and execute the command ./blender

Installing into /opt or /usr/local

You can also install Blender into /opt or /usr/local by moving the Blender directory into one of those locations. If you want to be able to run Blender from any directory you will also need to update your PATH variable. Consult your operating system documentation for the recommended method of setting your PATH.

Configuration

Alt+Mouse Conflict

Many Linux distributions default to AltLMB for moving windows. Since Blender uses Alt+Click it's normally easier to disable this feature or change the key to Super (Windows Key)

• Ubuntu 11.04: Settings > Window Manger Tweak > Accessibility > Change Window Key to Super
• Ubuntu 12.04 (Unity/Gnome): Command line (effective at next login): gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences mouse-button-modifier 'none'
• Other versions: todo

Compositing Desktop Environments

Many recent Linux distributions enable compositing when hardware support is available. This is a feature where the graphics card is used to do window drawing and accelerated desktop effects (for example: drop shadow and window transparency). Notably - Ubuntu Unity, Gnome Shell and KDE will use compositing.

While many users find this works flawlessly, some graphics cards have buggy drivers which cause drawing glitches with Blender but work correctly for regular applications which don't use OpenGL acceleration. Another downside to using hardware accelerated desktop effects is that the windows you have open share texture memory with Blender's OpenGL display and GPU rendering.

If you experience these problems they can be avoided by disabling desktop effects or by switching to a desktop environment that does not use desktop effects such as:

• Unity2D
• Gnome Fallback
• XFCE
• light weight window managers like openbox, jwm, sawfish, icewm... etc.

For details on this topic, see: Wikipedia - Compositing Window Managers