I’ve been using Blender with Ubuntu (and it’s derivatives - Linux Mint, elementary OS etc.) for quite a few years now. But one thing I’ve noticed is that there’s very little up-to-date information on using Blender with Ubuntu.
Blender can be installed in several ways, and it’s good to know how so you can decide which is best for you.
I’ve created this guide to help anyone interested in trying blender with Ubuntu - Because it’s on the Blender Artists forum it’s easily found too.
I’ve also written it to reach out to as many people as possible, so it does go into some depth, especially for beginners to Ubuntu - skip parts if you know what you’re doing.
As of writing, this guide works with Ubuntu 14.04 and 14.10, plus Mint and probably elementary OS with a few modifications. I’m not currently using anything other than Ubuntu, so I can’t test, your mileage my vary.
Contents
- Installing Proprietary Nvidia Drivers for Cycles.
- Install Blender Through the Default Repository (Software Centre).
- Install Blender with a PPA (Personal Package Archive).
- Install Blender Manually, Downloaded from Blender.org.
- Suggested Software for Artists and Animators in Ubuntu.
Installing Proprietary Nvidia Drivers for Cycles
If you have an Nvidia card and you wish to get the most power out of it for Blender. Perhaps use Cycles with GPU if your card supports CUDA, then you’ll need to install the proprietary Nvidia Drivers.
In the Unity Dash simply type “Drivers”, an application should appear with the title “Additional Drivers” - Select it.
After a few moments, you should be presented with a list of Nvidia drivers to choose from. Choose the one you prefer. You’ll have to be online obviously and Ubuntu will take care of setting it up for you.
Bug alert! The splash-screen that displays “Ubuntu” while booting will currently disappear and probably be turned into text. This is a known bug and has been around for a while. I expect when the new Mir appears, it will be fixed - it’s not a deal breaker though.
You can get the picture to display again, but you are limited to SD resolutions not HD, plus in 14.04 it defaults to what I think is 640x480 until the login screen appears.
Install Blender Through the Default Repository (Software Centre)
After completing a fresh Install of Ubuntu, most new users will head over to the Software Centre application to download and install Blender. But after doing so realise that it’s an old version of Blender.
The Official Repositories are geared to your version of Ubuntu and when that version came out, that’s the version of Blender that is available. Ubuntu’s version updates are every 6 month, Blender ever 3.
Use this method if you don’t need the latest bells and whistles and don’t want the hassle of going a bit further technically.
Currently as I write this, The Ubuntu repository for 14.04 has Blender 2.69 but the current release version of Blender on Blender.org is 2.72b.
PPAs (Personal Package Archive)
A “Personal Package Archive” or PPA for short. Is a means to install Blender on a regular basis. All done automatically when new versions are available.
To use the common “irie” PPA that most users use, all you have to do is open the Terminal and enter the commands below, one line at a time, with a carriage return (Enter Key) in between. You’ll also need your default password. Each part will take a few minutes to complete depending on the speed of your internet connection. Look out for any confirmations on the way too.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:irie/blender
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install blender
For general users it’s a great method, but the only drawback is that if you have an Nvidia card and wish to use GPU rendering for Cycles, then you’ll have to do the manual method below. Additionally with PPAs you can’t guarantee they will be around forever.
Install Blender Manually, Downloaded from Blender.org
This is the method that is a little more involved depending upon how much you wish to do.
Steps from 1 to 4 essentially will give you blender to launch.
Steps 5 to 6 gives you an ‘Application Launcher’ to add to the Unity Launcher or Docky if you use it.
Steps 7 to finish will allow you to ‘double-click’ .blend files to launch inside Blender.
Download Blender
1. Head over to blender.org and download Blender for Linux - making sure you select the relevant 32bit or 64bit version in the process.
The file should be compressed into an archive “tar.gz”, this is the default archiving format used in Ubuntu which is similar to .zip in Windows.
If you haven’t modified anything, your downloaded Blender archive should have been placed in your ‘Downloads’ folder.
2. Create a folder in you ‘Home’ Directory, call it “Other-Apps” (The title will be required later).
Note: Linux’s Terminal is easier to use if you avoid using spaces in your titles.
3. Open your Blender archive the same as you would in Windows, ‘double-click’. Ubuntu’s default Archive manager loads, drag the Blender folder to your newly created folder ‘Other-Apps’.
At this stage if you wished, you could launch blender by going into the Blender folder and ‘double-click’ the file titled “blender”.
This isn’t that great as there is no icon associated for blender. Also we can’t ‘double-click’ .blend files to open, or have an icon to represent a .blend file. If you want more, lets continue.
Re-name the Folder
4. First up we need to re-name the main Blender folder to something easier, which should be something similar to this “blender-2.72b-linux-glibc211-x86_64.tar.bz2”.
It’s a bit long to type in and could differ for different builds yo have. For this guide to work, name it “blender”.
Upgrade Tip:
When you wish to upgrade it’s very simple. Just re-name your current “blender” folder to something like “blender-old”. Now simply unpack the new blender tar.bz2 archive to your Other-Apps folder and re-name that to “blender”.
Create the Application Launcher
5. First up it would be nice to have Blender icons to appear on the Unity Launcher strip, or appear in the Docky Launcher (again if you have it installed). Luckily for us, Blender ships with icons within it’s folders which will be perfect for this.
Open the the Text Editor, normally titled “Gedit” and copy the text below into the editor:
#!/usr/bin/env xdg-open
[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Type=Application
Name=Blender
GenericName=3D Modeller
Comment=Create 3D images and Animate
Exec=/home/<b>stanley</b>/Other-Apps/blender/blender
Icon=/home/<b>stanley</b>/Other-Apps/blender/icons/scalable/apps/blender.svg
Terminal=false
Categories=Graphics;3DGraphics;GTK;
StartupNotify=true
MimeType=application/x-blender;
Name[en_GB]=blender
Remove the name ”stanley“, and replace it with your user name, normally lower-case.
As you can see within this text there are details which Ubuntu needs to know what Blender is, as at the moment we haven’t really installed Blender and Ubuntu doesn’t have a clue what it is.
Save the file to somewhere handy for now, such as the Blender folder we re-named earlier. Save it as “blender.desktop”.
Note: Ubuntu uses “.desktop” files to launch applications
We have now created a working launcher with an icon. If you ‘double-click’ it, blender opens.
Drag the blender.desktop launcher into Unity’s Launcher strip
6. If you don’t have the Unity Launcher hidden, you can now just drag the ‘blender.desktop’ launcher icon onto the strip.
If you’re using the Docky launcher. Simply run blender and right-click the icon that appears for Blender on the launcher strip and select “Pin to Dock”. Then move it to somewhere handy within Docky’s strip.
Mime-Types
7. At the moment you can launch Blender conveniently with an icon, but your ‘.blend’ files won’t launch Blender yet. Additionally your ‘.blend’ files don’t have an icon associated with them either.
Because Blender isn’t installed automatically, we still have to teach Ubuntu some more details. Currently Blender is running self-contained like a pendrive app.
First up lets get the Mime-type working and opening Blender when you ‘double-click’ the ‘.blend’ files.
Inside your ‘Home’ directory we need to turn on the ‘Hidden Files’, select CTRL+H. This is a toggle and can also hide them again.
Note: Anything with a “.” (dot/full-stop) will be hidden by default.
Next locate this folder:
.local/share/mime/packages
If any of the folders don’t exist, create them.
