Install on Unix

The installation of FreeCAD on the most well-known linux systems has been now endorsed by the community, and FreeCAD should be directly available via the package manager available on your distribution. The FreeCAD team also provides a couple of "official" packages when new releases are made, and a couple of experimental PPA repositories for testing bleeding-edge features.

Once you've got FreeCAD installed, it's time to get started!

Ubuntu
FreeCAD is available from Ubuntu repositories since version 9.04, and can be installed via the software center or with: sudo apt-get install freecad Alternatively, the freecad community provides a PPA with daily builds. This PPA is updated and built automatically every day from latest source code, and therefore contains maximum one-day old bleeding edge new features, but can also sometimes contain regressions (functionality that stops working). To add this PPA to your software sources list, do: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:freecad-maintainers/freecad-daily sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install freecad The freecad community also provides another PPA, which is updated manually every once in a while, which is therefore safer: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:freecad-maintainers/freecad-dev sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install freecad More information on the Download page

Debian, Mint and other debian-based systems
Since Debian Lenny, FreeCAD is available directly from the Debian software repositories and can be installed via synaptic or simply with: sudo apt-get install freecad

OpenSUSE
FreeCAD is typically installed with: zypper install FreeCAD

Gentoo
FreeCAD can be built/installed simply by issuing: emerge freecad

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

Many alternative, non-official FreeCAD 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.

Manual install on .deb based systems
If for some reason you cannot use one of the above methods, you can always download one of the .deb packages available on the Download page.

Once you downloaded the .deb corresponding to your system version, if you have the Gdebi package installed (usually it is), you just need to navigate to where you downloaded the file, and double-click on it. The necessary dependencies will be taken care of automatically by your system package manager. Alternatively you can also install it from the terminal, navigating to where you downloaded the file, and type:

sudo dpkg -i Name_of_your_FreeCAD_package.deb

changing Name_of_your_FreeCAD_package.deb by the name of the file you downloaded.

After you installed FreeCAD, a startup icon will be added in the "Graphic" section of your Start Menu.

Installing on other Linux/Unix systems
Unfortnately, at the moment, no precompiled package is available for other Linux/Unix systems,so you will need to compile FreeCAD yourself.

Installing Windows Version on Linux
See the Install on Windows page.