How can I have Kicad version v5 and the new v6 together in the same machine while v6 is not still official?

You cannot run 5.1 and 6.0 side-by-side using the Ubuntu PPAs. You can only run the latest stable and latest nightly side-by-side (so, currently 6.0 and 6.99)

If you want 6.0 stable, you need to add the kicad/kicad-6.0-releases PPA in place of kicad/kicad-5.1-releases.

If you need to run 6.0 stable and 5.1 stable on Ubuntu, you’ll need to use FlatPak or build from source.

Thanks for the quick response.
Message is loud and clear.

@jsreynaud is our Ubuntu packager, maybe he can comment on the feasibility of doing this for the PPAs.

it would be useful to have an AppImage for this? That would solve issues on dependencies…

We have a Flatpak for this purpose. If someone also wants to maintain an AppImage, that would be fine too…

It seems that AppImage is already maintained, but not officially supported / endorsed


@paulvdh I am seeing v5.99 only if I enable Universe source on apt configs. This is not the default thing, I believe. But I still think that version of Kicad should not be there. I just don’t know where to report it yet.

Well, if the Appimage is good and mayo the easiest way to have concurrent versions of the tool then it is fine. I use to use apt since it will upgrade packages automatically everytime I upgrade my computer (which happens in a daily base). Yeah, I am crazy, maybe. Does Appimage has something that keep packages upgraded when they have updates?

How Appimage works with the accessory files? For instance. I would like to have Python’s API of version 5 available for too. And since it is an Appimage it is going to be installed in a different place, right? Where is this place?

I just had a look at https://www.kicad.org/download/linux-mint/ and it looks like it’s already fixed. I see new repositories for a:

ppa:kicad/kicad-6.0-releases

(And also for Ubuntu)

At the moment they do not work for me though. For the last few days I’m having a problem with some internet sites that do not work. for example EEVblog also has not worked properly for a few days now. I assume it’s network related and I only have to wait for it to get fixed.

paul@cezanne:~$ sudo add-apt-repository --yes ppa:kicad/kicad-6.0-releases
[sudo] password for paul:                  
Cannot add PPA: '"Failed to download the PPA: HTTPSConnectionPool(host='launchpad.net', port=443): Read timed out. (read timeout=10)."'.

AppImage is perfect to be able to run old release of the sw… i.e. if the system is based on OCC 7.5 but your sw is built on OCC 6.8 you would be in trouble to have both on the same system… using AppImage for the old release, you’ll be fine
AppImage is something like Portable sw on win

It hasn’t been maintained/updated since 2019 with kicad 5.1.2

from the discussion I’ve read it seems there was some people aimed to maintain AppImage, but AppImage was never added to the official download page

there was also a long discussion at github here:


with @avb and @probono willing to help…

May be there is a chance to get AppImage working for kicad v5.1.12 or v5.1-testing … that woul at least give an easy way to use kicad 5 and 6 side by side in Linux

This worked for me. Maybe try again and see if you get the same error. I’ve been having some issues with launchpad.net over the past few days. Initial connection fails but then subsequent connections work.
I’ve just had a look at my sources file and its pointing to http and not https:

kicad-ubuntu-kicad-6_0-releases-focal.list:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/kicad/kicad-6.0-releases/ubuntu focal main

This motivated me to try it a few times in a row. On the fourth attempt I get a different message:

[sudo] password for paul:                  
Cannot add PPA: '"Failed to download the PPA: HTTPSConnectionPool(host='launchpad.net', port=443): Max retries exceeded with url: /api/1.0/~kicad/+archive/kicad-6.0-releases (Caused by NewConnectionError('<urllib3.connection.VerifiedHTTPSConnection object at 0x7fdd24579790>: Failed to establish a new connection: [Errno 101] Network is unreachable'))."'.
paul@cezanne:~$ sudo add-apt-repository --yes ppa:kicad/kicad-6.0-releases
Cannot add PPA: '"Failed to download the PPA: HTTPConnectionPool(host='ppa.launchpad.net', port=80): Max retries exceeded with url: /kicad/kicad-6.0-releases/ubuntu/dists/focal (Caused by NewConnectionError('<urllib3.connection.HTTPConnection object at 0x7fd4750ad100>: Failed to establish a new connection: [Errno 101] Network is unreachable'))."'.
paul@cezanne:~$ sudo add-apt-repository --yes ppa:kicad/kicad-6.0-releases
Cannot add PPA: '"Failed to download the PPA: HTTPConnectionPool(host='ppa.launchpad.net', port=80): Max retries exceeded with url: /kicad/kicad-6.0-releases/ubuntu/dists/focal (Caused by NewConnectionError('<urllib3.connection.HTTPConnection object at 0x7f21dc496100>: Failed to establish a new connection: [Errno 101] Network is unreachable'))."'.
paul@cezanne:~$ sudo add-apt-repository --yes ppa:kicad/kicad-6.0-releases
You are about to add the following PPA:
 Officials KiCad 6.0 releases

For the moment, 6.0.0 was not released. Only RC is available.
 More info: https://launchpad.net/~kicad/+archive/ubuntu/kicad-6.0-releases
Executing: /tmp/apt-key-gpghome.iHu9bGFIeS/gpg.1.sh --keyserver hkps://keyserver.ubuntu.com:443 --recv-keys FDA854F61C4D0D9572BB95E5245D5502FAD7A805
gpg: key 245D5502FAD7A805: "Launchpad PPA for KiCad" not changed
gpg: Total number processed: 1
gpg:              unchanged: 1

At the moment I’m not motivated to put much effort into this because of the incompatibility of V5.1.12 and V6.0.0-rc.

I can install KiCad-nightly V6.9.9, and that is probably good enough if I’m proofreading the “Getting Started in KiCad” guide, and try some things if they’re not clear. I just won’t update screenshots from V6.9.9 (Unless of trivial things).
For the rest I can wait until KiCad V6 has been released officially.

It has been, yesterday.

This looks like a issue with your internet, or maybe there are some issues with the CDN

Network is unreachable

See if you can browse to

http://ppa.launchpad.net/kicad/kicad-6.0-releases/ubuntu/

Then have a look under

http://ppa.launchpad.net/kicad/kicad-6.0-releases/ubuntu/pool/main/k/kicad/

You should see 6.0.0 listed for your version. So something like

kicad_6.0.0-1-202112231423+d3dd2cf0fa~116~ubuntu20.04.1_amd64.deb

If its not there is points to some CDN issue. Maybe try again in a few hours.

I’ve loaded the source into Ubuntu 20.04 and it works 100%.
6.0 stable is released and it should install.

greg@greg-X553MA:~$ dpkg -l | grep kicad
ii  kicad                                      6.0.0-1-202112231423+d3dd2cf0fa~116~ubuntu20.04.1 amd64        Electronic schematic and PCB design software
ii  kicad-demos                                6.0.0-1-202112231423+d3dd2cf0fa~116~ubuntu20.04.1 all          Common files used by kicad
ii  kicad-doc-en                               6.0.0-1-202112240915+1826~29~ubuntu20.04.1        all          Kicad help files (English)
ii  kicad-footprints                           6.0.0-1-202112231422+3ea7895b0~11~ubuntu20.04.1   all          Kicad footprints (modules)
ii  kicad-libraries                            6.0.0-1-202112231422+8~ubuntu20.04.1              all          meta-package for dep to all KiCad libraries (symbols, footprints, templates and 3D models)
ii  kicad-packages3d                           6.0.0-1-202112231425+e607286d~9~ubuntu20.04.1     all          Kicad packages3d (3d models for footprints)
ii  kicad-symbols                              6.0.0-1-202112231425+275f22eb~7~ubuntu20.04.1     all          Kicad symbols (schematic)
ii  kicad-templates                            6.0.0-1-202112231423+3a422b5~9~ubuntu20.04.1      all          Kicad templates

On Ubuntu 21.10, after purgin all my kicad-related ppas and adding back ppa for 5.1 I cannot install it due to missing dependencies.

➜ sudo apt install kicad
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 kicad : Depends: libngspice-kicad but it is not installable or
                  libngspice0 but it is not installable
         Recommends: kicad-libraries but it is not going to be installed
         Recommends: kicad-doc-en but it is not going to be installed
         Recommends: kicad-demos but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

This is the one I am trying to install

➜ sudo apt-cache policy kicad
kicad:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: 5.1.12-202111050918+84ad8e8a86~92~ubuntu21.10.1
  Version table:
     5.1.12-202111050918+84ad8e8a86~92~ubuntu21.10.1 500
        500 http://ppa.launchpad.net/kicad/kicad-5.1-releases/ubuntu impish/main amd64 Packages

Does this really need to be a dependency on this package?

Installing it from here helped me to install Kicad

But It should not be a dependency, I think.

KiCad V6 has been working properly for me for some days now.
I don’t know what happened with the launchpad repository, but apparently it’s been fixed.

I don’t care much about loosing KiCad V5 myself, although if there are lots of forum questions related to KiCad V5 and some Appimage is easily installable, then I may install it just to look up some things to answer forum questions. But it’s not high on my priority list.

I would also be very interested to hear from @jsreynaud on that topic. Our company runs entirely on V5 and I would like to investigate the switch to V6 knowing I can still work on V5. @leoheck suggested it should be doable if the old packages had the version appended to the end (eg. kicad-5 or similar), it seems to match the information I’m finding.

It is quite scary to update to V6 with the changes to the symbol and schematic formats. Not because of lack of backups, but because there is no easy way to downgrade the version if V6 starts to act up and we’re seeing discrepancies on our projects compared to V5. Or is there an easy way to go back to 5.1.12 using PPA that is document somewhere?

EDIT: I have tried to downgrade from 5.1.12 to 5.1.10 to no success:

$ sudo apt-get install kicad=5.1.10
[sudo] password for francois: 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
E: Version '5.1.10' for 'kicad' was not found
$ sudo apt-get install kicad=5.1.10-202107120859+88a1d61d58~90~ubuntu20.04.1
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
E: Version '5.1.10-202107120859+88a1d61d58~90~ubuntu20.04.1' for 'kicad' was not found