Installing on Linux

The contents on this page are not applicable.

Overview

The installation of LabRPS on the most well-known Linux systems has been now endorsed by the community, and LabRPS should be directly available via the package manager available on your distribution. The LabRPS team also provides some:

"Official" packages when new releases are made available via Snap packages, AppImages, Flatpaks and the PPA
Experimental or 'bleeding edge' builds available via PPA daily repository, AppImages, Ubuntu Snaps.

Ubuntu and Ubuntu-based systems

Many Linux distributions are based on Ubuntu and share its repositories. Besides official variants (Kubuntu, Lubuntu and Xubuntu), there are non official derivatives like Linux Mint, Voyager and others. The installation options below (Expand) should be compatible with these systems.

Official version

LabRPS is available from the Ubuntu Universe repository, and can be installed via the Software Center or from the terminal:

sudo apt install labrps

Note: the Ubuntu Universe package may be outdated as the packaging may lag behind the latest stable source code. In this case, it is suggested to install the package from the -stable PPA below. In addition, installing the -daily package can be done to test the development branch.

Stable PPA version

Warning: The LabRPS PPA is currently unmaintained and looking for volunteers. Please use an alternative (snap, appimage) until the issue is fixed!

Personal Package Archive (PPA) for the stable LabRPS release is maintained by the LabRPS community on Launchpad. The Launchpad repository is called LabRPS Stable Releases .

GUI

Install the stable PPA via the Graphical User Interface (GUI):

1. Navigate to Ubuntu Software → Software & Updates → Software Sources → Other Software

2. Click on Add, then copy and paste the following line

ppa:labrps-maintainers/labrps-stable

3. Add the source, close the dialog, and reload your software sources, if asked.

Now you can find and install the last stable LabRPS version from the Ubuntu Software Center.

CLI

Install the stable PPA via the Command Line Interface (CLI):

1. Add the PPA to your software sources:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:labrps-maintainers/labrps-stable

2. Retrieve the updated package lists:

sudo apt update

3. Then install LabRPS along with its offline documentation:

sudo apt install labrps labrps-doc

Note: due to packaging problems, in certain versions of Ubuntu the labrps-doc package has collided with the installation of LabRPS or one of its dependencies; if this is the case, remove the labrps-doc package, and only install the labrps package. If the labrps-doc package doesn't exist, then ignore it.

Checking Installation

4. Once you have the stable PPA added to your sources using one of the above methods, the labrps package will install this PPA version over the one provided by the Ubuntu Universe repository. You can see the available versions with the following apt-cache command:

apt-cache policy labrps

The output should look similar to the following (of course the version info will vary):

labrps:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: 2:0.18.4+dfsg1~201911060029~ubuntu18.04.1
  Version table:
     2:0.18.4+dfsg1~201911060029~ubuntu18.04.1 500
        500 http://ppa.launchpad.net/labrps-maintainers/labrps-stable/ubuntu bionic/main amd64 Packages
     0.16.6712+dfsg1-1ubuntu2 500
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic/universe amd64 Packages
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ apt-cache policy labrps-doc

5. Invoke the stable (PPA) version of LabRPS from the GUI or CLI. The latter method is as follows:

./labrps

Development PPA (Daily)

As LabRPS is in constant development, you may wish to install the daily package to keep with the latest improvements and bug fixes. The repository is also hosted on Launchpad and is called labrps-daily.

This version is compiled daily from the official master repository. Please beware that although it will contain new features and bug fixes, it may also have newer bugs, and be unstable.

Add the daily PPA to your software sources, update the package lists, and install the daily package:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:labrps-maintainers/labrps-daily
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install labrps-daily

Every day you can update to the latest daily:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install labrps-daily

Note: in some cases new code or dependencies added to LabRPS will cause packaging errors; if this happens, a daily package may not be generated until the maintainers manually fix the problems. If you wish to continue testing the latest code, you should get the source code and compile LabRPS directly; for instructions see compiling.

Run the daily (PPA) version of LabRPS:

labrps-daily

Note: it is possible to install both the -stable and -daily packages in the same system. This is useful if you wish to work with a stable version, and still be able to test the latest features in development. Notice that the executable for the daily version is labrps-daily, but for the stable version it is just labrps.

Debian and other Debian-based systems

Since Debian Lenny, LabRPS is available directly from the Debian software repositories and can be installed via synaptic or simply with:

sudo apt-get install labrps

OpenSUSE

LabRPS is typically installed with YAST (abbr. Yet another Setup Tool) the Linux operating system setup and configuration tool, or in any terminal/console (root rights required) with:

zypper install LabRPS

Note: This procedure only covers the installation of officially released stable LabRPS program versions, depending on the installed links to the program package repositories of your OS version. The openSUSE package may be outdated as the packaging may lag behind the latest stable source code. In this case, it is suggested to install the package manually from the below indicated (Expand) source repositories.

A vast release program for LabRPS package builds are offered. Please visit for a survey:

Survey of repositories on openSUSE

Generally for selecting the correct openSUSE distribution needed it is necessary to click on the particular View button.

Stable

The stable package version: Stable repositories on openSUSE. The correct openSUSE distribution version must be selected in the lower part of the web page.

Note: openSUSE has several options to choose from when downloading LabRPS. To view these options, visit Survey of stable repositories on openSUSE.

Development

Latest development releases AKA unstable: Unstable repositories listings on openSUSE

It is recommended to grab the binary packages directly. Then select the correct distribution for your installed openSUSE OS.

Gentoo

LabRPS can be built/installed simply by issuing:

emerge labrps

Fedora

LabRPS has been included in the official Fedora packages since Fedora 20. It can be installed from the command line with:

sudo dnf install labrps

On older Fedora releases, that was:

sudo yum install labrps

The gui packages managers can also be used. Search for "labrps".

The official release package version tends to be well behind the LabRPS releases. Package: labrps shows the versions included in the Fedora repositories over time and versions.

More current versions can be obtained by downloading one of the .AppImage releases from the github repository. These work fine on Fedora.

If you want to keep up with the absolute latest daily builds, LabRPS is also available on copr . To install the build from there, in a terminal session, enter:

sudo dnf copr enable @labrps/nightly
sudo dnf install labrps

That leaves the copr repository active, so

sudo dnf upgrade

or equivalent, will update to the latest LabRPS build, along with updates from any of the other active repos. If you want something a bit more stable, you can disable @labrps/nightly again after the initial install. The copr repository only keeps builds from the past 2 weeks. This is not a solution if you want to pick a specific older version.

Instructions are also available on compile LabRPS yourself, including a script specifically for Fedora. With a minor change, to checkout the specific commit from git, any version since about LabRPS 0.15 can be built on any distribution since Fedora 21.

Arch

Installing LabRPS on Arch Linux and derivatives (ex. Manjaro):

pacman -S labrps

Other

If you find out that your system features LabRPS but is not documented in this page, please tell us on the forum!

Many alternative, non-official LabRPS packages are available on the net, for example for systems like slackware or fedora. A search on the net can quickly give you some results.

Installing on other Linux/Unix systems

Many common Linux distros now include a precompiled LabRPS as part of the standard packages. This is often out of date, but is a place to start. Check the standard package managers for your system. One of the following (partial) list of commands could install the official version of LabRPS for your distro from the terminal. These probably need administrator privileges.

apt-get install labrps
dnf install labrps
emerge labrps
slackpkg install labrps
yum install labrps
zypper install labrps
pacman -Sy labrps

The package name is case sensitive, so try `LabRPS` as well as `labrps`. If that does not work for you, either because your package manager does not have a precompiled LabRPS version available, or because the available version is too old for your needs, you can try installing the Flatpak or Snap packages (these work on most x86_64 Linux distributions) or try downloading one of the .AppImage releases from the github repository. These also tend to work on most x86_64 Linux distributions, without any special installation. Just make sure the downloaded file is marked as executable, then run it.

If that still is not good enough, and you cannot locate another source of a precompiled package for your situation, you will need to compile LabRPS yourself.