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Official version

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

sudo snap install freecad

Note: the Ubuntu Universe package may be outdated as the packaging may lag behind the latest stable source code.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 FreeCAD 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 FreeCAD release is maintained by the FreeCAD community on Launchpad. The Launchpad repository is called FreeCAD 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:freecad-maintainers/freecad-stable

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

Now you can find and install the last stable FreeCAD 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:freecad-maintainers/freecad-stable

2. Retrieve the updated package lists:

sudo apt update

3. Then install FreeCAD along with its offline documentation:

sudo apt install freecad freecad-doc

Note: due to packaging problems, in certain versions of Ubuntu the freecad-doc package has collided with the installation of FreeCAD or one of its dependencies; if this is the case, remove the freecad-doc package, and only install the freecad package. If the freecad-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 freecad 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 freecad

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

freecad:
  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/freecad-maintainers/freecad-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 freecad-doc

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

./freecad

Development PPA (Daily)

As FreeCAD 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 freecad-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:freecad-maintainers/freecad-daily
sudo apt update
sudo apt install freecad-daily

Every day you can update to the latest daily:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install freecad-daily

Note: in some cases new code or dependencies added to FreeCAD 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 FreeCAD directly; for instructions see compiling.

Run the daily (PPA) version of FreeCAD:

freecad-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 freecad-daily, but for the stable version it is just freecad.

A vast release program for FreeCAD 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 FreeCAD. 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.

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, FreeCAD is also available on copr. To install the build from there, in a terminal session, enter:

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

That leaves the copr repository active, so

sudo dnf upgrade

or equivalent, will update to the latest FreeCAD build, along with updates from any of the other active repos. If you want something a bit more stable, you can disable @freecad/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 FreeCAD yourself, including a script specifically for Fedora. With a minor change, to checkout the specific commit from git, any version since about FreeCAD 0.15 can be built on any distribution since Fedora 21.