Installing multiple version of blender

I currently use blender 2.65 but am thinking of installing the newest version (2.7 something). The thing is, I know some programs will self-uninstall any old version when you install a new version. Would blender do this, or will the old version still be able to work fine alongside the new version. The old version (2.65) i have been using for years, and keep it’s installer exe file in a few safe places for whenever i need to reinstall it, i most recently reinstalled it about a month ago. It is currently running on a windows 8 machine, and running well. Would attempting to install the latest version wipe it out, or just add a second program beside it (so that the “all programs list” under control panel would show an entry for blender 2.65 and another entry for blender 2.7X . I want to keep the old version working as some of my blender 2.65 models might lose their complex constraints, parenting and texture setups if imported to 2.7X. If i can have both running on my machine at once then any such issues wouldn’t matter as i could always go back to 2.65 if a model didn’t function right in 2.7X . Thanks

Use the zip file download and unzip it to your location of choice so the installer does not interfere with any current install. Each blender version number has their own separate config files so different versions can sit happily together

So basically you mean when i run the installer get the new version to put it’s program files somewhere other than in the current …C:\Program Files (x86)\Blender Foundation\Blender … directory where the existing version of 2.65 sits. Make say a new path for the other one such as …C:\Program Files (x86)\Blender Foundation
ew version of blender\blender latest\Blender… at the point during installation when the new version asks where i want to put it. I assume it won’t have trouble with both version wanting things like registry values to be set differently for each of them, and i assume it would also be alright with having both programs running at once, rather than merely both being on the same machine and used individually at separate times. by the way, i put those dots on either end of the file paths just to make them clearer, the text editor on this forum doesn’t always work quite right so thye are doing the job of new lines, i know that the actual paths don’t have those dots on the end. Thanks

No, what Richard meant was using the ZIP version of Blender:


You just unzip it anywhere you like and start the corresponding blender.exe = no installation = no registry entries = no interference with existing Blender installs at all.

You mean that the zip version can just be run as an exe file without full installation, kind of like how some on-demand security programs or the anonymous browser tor are just run from exe files and then closed when one is finished with them. Thanks

Indeed!
It will still save its preferences to C:\Users\your_username\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.xx, though, but you can avoid that by adding a folder called “config” in the “2.7x” subdirectory of the unzipped Blender:


Blender will recognize that folder on startup and place all preferences and the startup file there. Now you have your complete Blender package with all settings in one place - you could even run it from a USB stick, if you wanted to…

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In Ubuntu I have to run ./blender [ENTER] in the correct unzipped parent folder ‘blender-2.91.2-linux64’ in this case because running blender [ENTER] defaults to the newest version.

In openSuse I can create a desktop shortcut easily by right clicking the desktop and selecting create launcher, in the dialogue, give the shortcut a name (ie the blender version), in the command tab navigate to blenders folder and choose the blender executable file, if you want to use the blender icon you can find it the same folder.
I am sure there is a way to do this in ubuntu and windows as well. You can make different shortcuts for each blender version.

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