Installing on Ubuntu-based Distributions

Hello,

@john_phelyno asked about installing Scripture App Builder on Elementary OS:

I moved away from windows to Linux. Unfortunately the only distro that work for my Laptop is Elementary OS Juno. I cant seems to get the sil-repository working for me, other distro like Wasta and Ubuntu i can get it but not Elementary OS.

I replied:

we have limited resources to support Linux distributions. We have chosen to support the Ubuntu distribution with debian packages. This works with Wasta since it is based on Ubuntu. We publish the packages to https://packages.sil.org. There are instructions on that website on how to install the repository on Ubuntu (or distributions based on Ubuntu).

I installed Elementary OS Juno in a virtual machine and found out by looking at /etc/apt/sources.list that it was based off of Ubuntu bionic. In this file is the source repositories for the Operating System. You will see lines like:

deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ bionic multiverse

To install Scripture App Builder on Ubuntu based distributions, you will need to add SIL’s package repository to the system and adjust the name of the distribution to be the Ubuntu base distribution. In this case:

  1. Follow the instructions on http://packages.sil.org for Enable access to SIL Software in Ubuntu 18.04 (bionic) and save to your Downloads folder. This will download sil-repository.deb.
  2. In a terminal run the following commands:
    a. sudo apt install ~/Downloads/sil-repository.deb
    b. sudo vi /etc/apt/sources.list.d/packages-sil-org.list (change juno to bionic)
    c. sudo apt update
    d. sudo apt install scripture-app-builder

I was able to get Scripture App Builder installed on Elementary OS. I didn’t try to build apps and do a full test. (I don’t have time for that … I didn’t have time for this!)

Remember, this is not support. Your mileage may vary. If you run into problems, hopefully other Linux users in the community can help.

Chris