For the record, per the large box on the top of the Linux Mint page, it’s not an officially supported distro.
It’s tempting to just finally delete the page to avoid situations like this :heh:
Yea so this isn’t a job for anyone here. The docs team in the last few years has more or less disappeared/moved on with their lives and that has left us with basically nobody dedicated. The rest of us developers are slowly updating docs but we don’t have enough personal free time for that and you know, living life.
But as mentioned above, Linux is a complete and utter mess because every distro is NIH and does things differently…which is why it’ll never be mainstream for the world but that’s a rant.
Actually I think OP worries too much. I say: trust the packaging system, many of the past kinks have been ironed out. You don’t need to worry about how to “restore” the files installed by the packages if you don’t try to subvert the permissions; they belong to a system account for a good reason. You can only mess up your own configuration, and if you manage to do that forum people can help you. So don’t worry ahead of time, be happy.
No, don’t do that.
Copy / Paste the first three lines into the shell and Kicad “just works”.
Don’t even have to bother typing the commands.
Always has “just worked”… 4 , 5 , 5.99 , 6 and 6.99. Never been a problem!
Thanks much for the replies! … and even though I have no real clue what my distro does exactly it’s helpful to read your opinions on the matter, including the state of Kicad documentation. I will be more trusting from here and try to get on with my work.
on a side note, if Mint is not officially supported (not completely sure what this means) then which route would any of you suggest taking instead ?!
Mint is basically an Ubuntu derivative, the KiCad packages are the same. I haven’t heard of any Mint specific problems or bugs. “Officially supported” means that some developer uses a distro and can be trusted to help with distro specific bug fixing if needed.
I have to say, so far K6 seems lighter to use from K5 (I know about the netlist tx part being obscured from view) … and I’m impressed with the number of availble models on both the symbol and footprint sides
otherwise K6 has not produced a single glitch of any sort so far … // yup, I’m digging the experience even though I haven’t seriously hit the docs yet and just “winging it” …
your replies have given me a couple of directions to aim for in my studying of Kicad
I appreciate your patience thru this thread
again, thanks!
btw, in regards to users personal methodology preferences (as albin posted above about making/editing copies of master symbols, for example) is there some resource/thread that discusses some of these best/recommend practices ?!
The big problem that KiCAD has is the same as other Open Source projects have:
There are NO maintainers.
FOSS is about programming, and that’s where all the energy and fun is.
No one is interested in writing documentation or maintaining the symbol libraries. Boring tasks! Tedious! Yawn!
So they won’t get done.
Should someone volunteer to do something, he/she will be sent to GitHub/GitLab and told to go from there. Not encouraging, and the most user-hostile environment imaginable.
So when someone from KiCAD whines about people not supporting the efforts, I slap my thighs and guffaw.
Now you know why KiCAD documentation and libraries suck. I maintain my own libraries. Share them? Sure, but not through GitHub/GitLab.
I tend to think it’s more that both documentation and library management are thankless tasks, and when you do a thankless task for long enough and enough people berate you for not donating enough of your time, you tend to lose motivation and go do something else that’s more rewarding.
Or you choose not to. I see only overreactions and suggestions against contributing (= the community) because you cannot deal with git.
You have bothered to learn how to make symbols and footprints and you keep suggesting that.
The other side suggests to learn that tool, and help instead of complaining. And once again i am asking NOT to discourage anyone because you are not able to do so. Most of your replies are about how bad libraries are, and how git makes you feel.
I don’t mean to say that the documentation is in perfect shape – there is a lot to improve and constructive criticism is helpful. But what has been updated for v6 should be accurate!
woah, not trying to discourage nobody here - just trying to give feedback on the frustrating aspects from a very unsavy user … I’m only asking for some kind of dumbed down overview of the full pre and post install process // on this kicad.org page: https://www.kicad.org/download/linux-mint/ … so, we can know what to expect up front - that’s all …
I agree my choice of language in the title seems very poor in hindsight, my apologies don’t mean to come off like that
I’m obviously not being clear I’m stating that I don’t understand the role Git plays with kicad and asking what it’s for - thought that was clear
It’s the file system I still also don’t get but that’s a side issue
I was told in K5 that the automatic re-dating of pro files wouldn’t happen
Short answer: As a user you can ignore Git and the file structure. Although the latter conforms to conventions established for the OS, and is visible in the configuration for libraries.
Eventually all this will settle down. Nobody asks what Git has to do with how Libreoffice (or many other packages) is maintained, or what the file structure of Libreoffice looks like, although I know the general outline from Linux norms.
Also packagers will appear for the major distros. In the beginning authors/developers have to do their own packaging, but eventually this will be taken up by a cadre of specialists.
If people are curious what a packager does, here’s what the build files for openSUSE look like:
and the spec file that specifies how the package is built: