Install on Linux/Unix

Overview
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 Personal Package Archive (PPA) repositories for testing bleeding-edge features.

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

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 should be compatible with these systems.

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

the Ubuntu Universe package may be outdated as the packaging may lag behind the latest stable source code.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 PPA below. In addition, installing the package can be done to test the development branch.

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

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


 * 1. Navigate to
 * 2. Click on, then copy and paste the following line




 * 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.

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


 * 1. Add the PPA to your software sources:




 * 2. Retrieve the updated package lists:




 * 3. Then install FreeCAD along with its offline documentation:



due to packaging problems, in certain versions of Ubuntu the package has collided with the installation of FreeCAD or one of its dependencies; if this is the case, remove the  package, and only install the  package. If the 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 package will install this PPA version over the one provided by the Ubuntu Universe repository. You can see the available versions with the following  command:


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


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



Development PPA (Daily)
As FreeCAD is in constant development, you may wish to install the 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:

Every day you can update to the latest daily:

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:

it is possible to install both the and  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, but for the stable version it is just.

Debian 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:

OpenSUSE
A vast release program for FreeCAD package builds are offered.

For installing of stable releases, please visit for a survey:

Survey of stable repositories on openSUSE

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

The stable package version of FreeCAD could be found under:

Stable repositories on openSUSE

The correct openSUSE distribution version must be selected in the lower part of the web page.

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

This procedure only covers the installation of officially released stable FreeCAD program versions, depending on the installed links to the program package repositories of your OS.

To check out the latest development releases (unstable) you have to visit:

Unstable repositories on openSUSE

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

Gentoo
FreeCAD can be built/installed simply by issuing:

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

On older Fedora releases, that was:

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

The official release package version tends to be well behind the FreeCAD releases. Package: freecad 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, FreeCAD is also available on copr . To install the build from there, in a terminal session, enter:

That leaves the copr repository active, so

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.

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

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:

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
Many common Linux distros now include a precompiled FreeCAD 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 FreeCAD for your distro from the terminal. These probably need administrator privileges.

The package name is case sensitive, so try `FreeCAD` as well as `freecad`. If that does not work for you, either because your package manager does not have a precompiled FreeCAD version available, or because the available version is too old for your needs, you can try downloading one of the .AppImage releases from the github repository. These tend to work on most 64 bit 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 can not locate another source of a precompiled package for your situation, you will need to compile FreeCAD yourself.

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