.. _a_setup_linux:

**************
Setup on Linux
**************

.. _GitHub: https://github.com/vkbo/novelWriter/releases
.. _main website: https://novelwriter.io

This is a brief guide to how you can get novelWriter running on a Linux computer. There are
currently no install package of novelWriter for Linux, so it is recommended that you download
either the full source or minimal package and extract it to a practical location on your system and
run the ``setup.py`` script.


Running from Source
===================

To run novelWriter from source, download the latest source package from the release page on
GitHub_ or the `main website`_, or if you have git running on your computer, you can also clone the
repository.


Step 1: Installing Dependencies
-------------------------------

The dependencies of novelWriter are generally available from Linux distro repositories. For Debian
and Ubuntu, they can be installed with:

.. code-block:: console

   sudo apt install python3-pyqt5 python3-lxml python3-enchant

If you prefer to install dependencies via PyPi, or the repository dependencies are out of date, you
can install them with:

.. code-block:: console

   pip3 install --user -r requirements.txt


Step 2: Install Package (Optional)
----------------------------------

You can install novelWriter to the default location for Python packages using ``setuptools``. This
step is optional as you can also just put the novelWriter program folder wherever you like. For
instance to ``/opt/novelWriter`` and run Step 3 to set up icons and launcher.

To install novelWriter to the default location, it requires that you have ``setuptools`` installed
on your system. If you don't have it installed, it can usually be installed from your distro's
repository. For Debian and Ubuntu this is achieved with:

.. code-block:: console

   sudo apt install python3-setuptools

The package is also available from PyPi:

.. code-block:: console

   pip3 install --user setuptools

With ``setuptools`` in place, novelWriter can be installed to the user space with:

.. code-block:: console

   ./setup.py install --user

This should install novelWriter as ``~/.local/bin/novelWriter``. If you instead want to install for
all users, i.e. as ``/usr/local/bin/novelWriter``, run:

.. code-block:: console

   sudo ./setup.py install

This is equivalent to what the ``pip`` installer does. It puts novelWriter in the location on your
system where Python packages are usually kept. This is not really the best suited location for a
GUI application like novelWriter, so you may instead copy the entire source to a suiteable location
yourself.


Step 3: Create Launcher Icons
-----------------------------

Regardless of where you extract or install the source files, you can set up a standard icon and a
launcher. To set up this desktop launcher, the needed icons, and the project file association,
run the following from inside the novelWriter folder:

.. code-block:: console

   ./setup.py xdg-install

By default, this command installs the launcher and icons for the current user only. To install for
all users, run the script with the ``sudo`` command.

.. tip::
   All options of the setup script can be listed with: ``./setup.py help``.