Hello!
I have tried 5.99 on a virtual machine some time ago, but for several reasons, (namely graphic acceleration), it doesn’t work well. I would like to have a test run on Ubuntu, but as it’s my primary development machine, I have to be careful. There is a thread explaining how to do on Windows, so the question is as follows: how to do on Ubuntu 20.04?
As a first step, I can duplicate my design files folder. I made a backup of it, just in case.
I can install Kicad 5.99 full version (the file which is 1GB), but I’m not sure how to proceed. I have notice that Kicad is in /usr/bin/kicad, so installing it will probably replace my stable 5.1.9 with another version.
Has anybody done it?
Any hint would be welcome.
I don’t run Ubuntu but many things are common across Linux distro packaging schemes.
No two packages can claim the same file so unfortunately 5.1.9 cannot coexist with 5.99. In fact you may wish to remove 5.1.9 packages first to eliminate any chance of leftover contamination. Don’t worry, this won’t delete your projects or personal libraries.
There won’t be a single file to install as is common in Windows, but there will be a set of packages, which will total to about the same amount of file space, and the largest package will probably be the 3D model libraries. You would add the repo for 5.99 packages, then select the 5.99 packages to install, using Ubuntu’s package manager.
For more details, there should be posts about the 5.99 Ubuntu repo.
Normally kicad and kicad-nightly can be installed side-by-side in each supported OS. They also rely on different setting folders.
ATM on ubuntu 20 you may have issues to install kicad-nigthly if you have also freecad-nightly installed.
kicad-nightly is based on OCC 7.3 but freecad-nigtly has just switched to OCC 7.5 and you cannot install both OCC release on the same pc afaik.
Thanks for your reply. In this case, I guess my only option is to duplicate my design repository, and try to install 5.99. But will I be able to reinstall 5.1.9 if things go wrong? Is the OCC, whatever it is, not backward compatible?
I scanned through most of the download/install text and apparently it does not explicitly state that both the stable V5.1.x and the nightly V5.99 can be installed at the same time.
I have both installed on my Linux Mint box (pretty much like Ubuntu, only Green & Grey instead of Brown & Orange).
As with all Open Source software, (or anything life related) There never is a guarantee it will work. If there are people who give you such guarantees, they mosly lie , don’t know what “guarantee” means, or they are just plain ignorant, stupid or both. So make your backups. It never hurts and may save your sanity. You should always have backups of all works you value (and on separate media too).
But both the stable V5.1.x and the nighty V5.99 can be installed and run at the same time. On my Mint box KiCad-nightly installs itself in “kicad-nightly” directories and also has it’s own versions of all libraries.
So I have:
And maybe some other locations too, I haven’t looked too carefully.
KiCad-nightly opens stable V5.1.x projects just fine, but one you save a project in V5.99 you can not open it anymore in stable V5.1.x. Especially the schematic format has completely changed (To S-expressions, and schematic symbols are also embedded in the schematic file format itself. No more “project-cache.lib” files.
[Edit] Aahhrrgggg… Silly me.
Don’t skimp over the blue text.
I do not know what an OCC is, and I’ve never had any problem with it.
I do use FreeCAD_0.19-24212-Linux-Conda_glibc2.12-x86_64.AppImage and KiCad-nightly:
Application: KiCad
Version: 5.99.0-unknown-5ca7a2c457~117~ubuntu20.04.1, release build
Libraries:
wxWidgets 3.0.4
libcurl/7.68.0 OpenSSL/1.1.1f zlib/1.2.11 brotli/1.0.7 libidn2/2.2.0 libpsl/0.21.0 (+libidn2/2.2.0) libssh/0.9.3/openssl/zlib nghttp2/1.40.0 librtmp/2.3
Platform: Linux 5.4.0-66-generic x86_64, 64 bit, Little endian, wxGTK, mate, x11
Build Info:
Date: Mar 5 2021 08:04:50
wxWidgets: 3.0.4 (wchar_t,wx containers,compatible with 2.8) GTK+ 3.24
Boost: 1.71.0
OCC: 7.3.0
Curl: 7.68.0
ngspice: 31
Compiler: GCC 9.3.0 with C++ ABI 1013
Build settings:
KICAD_SCRIPTING=ON
KICAD_SCRIPTING_MODULES=ON
KICAD_SCRIPTING_PYTHON3=ON
KICAD_SCRIPTING_WXPYTHON=ON
KICAD_SCRIPTING_WXPYTHON_PHOENIX=ON
KICAD_SCRIPTING_ACTION_MENU=ON
KICAD_USE_OCC=ON
KICAD_SPICE=ON
Ah, indeed there is an OCC in KiCad’s version info, but I still don’t know what it is.
Blessing of the ignorant probably.
This lists problems with OCC: https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?t=43490
Maybe I’m just lucky.
Maybe it’s because I use Mint (21.something I think) instead of Ubuntu.
The FreeCAD Appimage takes about 24 seconds to start and load the first drawing. After that it runs reasonably well on my 9 year old PC with a passmark rating of around 3000.
Silly me. 
