Linux initial setup per-user installation

by Sorn

Hi, here’s a list of steps to set-up 3DCoat for Linux in a workstation for a single local user.

It may be useful to some, and as a reference to me. 

1. Download the latest Linux build (obviously)
   1. As of today, we can do this by going to https://pilgway.com/~sergyi/links-Linux.html
   2. Alternatively, we can download the last stable build in our ACCOUNT profile page at https://pilgway.com
2. Unpack the file and place the resulting folder wherever we find it most appropriate.
   1. For the purpose of this list, I’d say I downloaded the file 3DCoat-2025.01.tar.bz2 in my downloads folder (/home/USERNAME/Downloads)
   2. In my file browser, I then extracted the contents of the file with right-click>’Extract Here’ over the downloaded file.
      1. We can do that in a terminal or with a similar command in another file browser (using Gnome in this instance, with Files file browser) if we wish.
   3. It’s quite a big file, it may take a little while to extract depending on our computer system.
   4. I finally get a folder called 3DCoat-2025.01 in my downloads folder (it’s the folder extracted from the downloaded file, containing all files 3DCoat needs to start running).
3. Rename the folder to 3DCoat-2025 (or whatever name we find practical, really, but I’ll stick to that name in this little how-to).
4. Move the folder 3DCoat-2025 to its final destination place if we wish, now.
   1. I’ve moved it to /home/USERNAME/Programs in my workstation (this is really not  necessary, but we’ll need to remember the folder location anyway in an upcoming configuration step whether we move it or not, mind you).
5. Create a text file called 3DCoat.sh in our home folder (/home/USERNAME/). (It can be anywhere, in fact, we just must remember where we place it for a future step).
   1. The text file should contain just two lines of text:
      1. cd /home/USERNAME/Programs/3DCoat-2025 ./3dcoat This is the file that will actually run 3DCoat in our system: It goes to where the program executable is and runs it.
         Remember to change USERNAME in the lines above to our actual user name.
         
         (Since 2023 came about, 3DCoat has two versions for Linux: 3dcoat-Ubuntu22.04 and 3dcoat-Ubuntu20.04. In the example above I used the more recent one, but it can be changed by typing 3dcoat-Ubuntu20.04 instead in the text file if there are issues running 3DCoat in your machine to see if that helps.)
         Edit: The above paragraph no longer reflects what happens as of version 2025. Left here for context and avoid confusion in case of upgrades/updates.
      2. Since this text file is meant to run as a script, a command, we must tell the system we authorise the text file to run as a program instead of treating it as an ordinary text file.
         We do it by right clicking the text file and in Properties tick “Allow executing file as program” in Permissions tab.
         Alternatively, with a terminal open in the directory (folder) where the file is, we type:
           sudo chmod +x 3DCoat.sh  
6. Create a .desktop file in /home/USERNAME/.local/share/applications called 3DCoat.desktop
   1. We can do it by using any text editor.
      A .desktop file is a Gnome Desktop Environment launcher for programs. Since 3DCoat will not be doing it on its own, we’ll do it ourselves to have a nice way to run the program, with an icon, in our user’s Desktop.
   2. The text file lines will be:
      1. [Desktop Entry] Encoding=UTF-8 Version=1.0 Type=Application Terminal=true Exec=/home/USERNAME/3DCoat.sh Name=3DCoat Icon=/home/USERNAME/Programs/3DCoat-2025/data/Icon/3DCoat.png Categories=Graphics;3DGraphics; StartupWMClass=3dcoat We must change USERNAME the above text lines to match our actual user name.
         Also, make sure that the icon folder description is correct too (if we placed our 3DCoat unpacked folder somewhere else, now is the time to edit that line to fit our folder structure).
         If, for some reason, we want 3DCoat to run without any output on a Terminal, we can change the line Terminal=true to Terminal=false in the text file 3DCoat.desktop
   3. The added StartupWMClass=3dcoat makes sure that when using a Dock panel in Gnome it won’t duplicate visible icons when running 3DCoat (otherwise 3DCoat will appear as an additional icon in the dock when running, alongside the icon to launch it)
   4. We can create this text file anywhere and then move it to  /home/USERNAME/.local/share/applications afterwards.
   5. If we can’t find the folder .local we can hit CTRL+h in our home folder file navigator window and it will show it, with other folders starting with a dot. Linux uses a dot at the beginning of a folder (or file) name to mark it as “hidden.” Those are mostly configuration folders (and files) that a user hardly ever needs to see or touch manually. Hitting the shortcut CTRL+h once more will let all configuration folders hidden again; if we wish to tidy up the home folder appearance, that is.
7. Restart the desktop or log out.
   1. Most times, after creating a desktop application launcher, we must “refresh” the desktop environment to make it available. We can do it like this:
      1. Reboot the system (a tad drastic but it will work for sure.)
      2. Log out. Then log in again. That restarts the desktop for the user.
      3. Press ALT+F2 hotkey shortcut and type r (just the letter R) and Return if a prompt appears. This sends the command “restart” to our desktop environment in most Linux distributions using Gnome.
8. Run 3DCoat: Now we press the Super key (in many keyboards that key has a Microsoft Windows logo printed on it) and find the 3DCoat icon. We can just type it and it should show up. (Sometimes, depending on our Linux distribution, we may have to press SuperKey(the MS Windows logo one)+A or SuperKey+S to get to all the icons of the software installed).
   1. We can launch 3DCoat from here or pin it to a dock if we want the launching icon in the dock (if we use one) for convenience.
9. Correct benign error messages appearing in the Terminal: As of today (version 2025.01 of 3DCoat for Linux) there are some png files’ icc profiles in the 3DCoat folders that prompt a warning in an otherwise useful terminal output.
   They look like a lot, or many, “libpng warning: iCCP: known incorrect sRGB profile” messages.
   We can fix it by doing this:
   1. Open a terminal and go to where we placed the 3DCoat unpacked folder. (In my case, to /home/USERNAME/Programs/3DCoat-2025) and execute a command that will find any png file in any directory (folder) inside our 3DCoat folder and fix it.
      1. cd /home/USERNAME/Programs/3DCoat-2025 find . -type f -name ‘*.png’ -exec mogrify \{\} \; Next time we run 3DCoat it shouldn’t complain about those sRGB profiles.
         Remember to change USERNAME in the lines above to our actual user name. Also, if the path (where the folder containing 3DCoat) is different, adjust it accordingly too.
10. When a new build of 3DCoat is published, we can download the file and extract it over the current 3DCoat folder in /home/USERNAME/Programs/3DCoat-2025 (or wherever we placed it before).
    I just delete the folder and place the new one, renamed to just 3DCoat-2025 where the old was. In this way, I don’t have to change any other file in the system, nor risking any old files that stays there as a leftover causing any trouble. Just to be practical and safe.
    If we don’t want to rename the folder, and leave it as 3DCoat-2025.01 (as an example of a possible decompressed new build folder), or move the folder where the old one unpacked was, just remember to change the path in the 3DCoat.desktop and 3DCoat.sh text files with the new one.
    We can also repeat Step 9 for the new updated 3DCoat version.
11. Licensing our 3DCoat build: I omitted the licensing prompt that appears the first time we run 3DCoat. It will only be asked the fist time we run 3DCoat with our user or until we actually load the license.
    1.  I just load the license downloaded from my account when prompted and that’s it. We will not have to do it again after the first time, nor when a new version is installed like we did here, until it expires and we need to load a new one.
    2. 3DCoat creates some folders for us, with our user’s preferences and settings in our user’s Documents folder. Here, we’ve seen how to install the program in our user’s Workstation. The configuration folders are left untouched. 

That’s it for now.  Happy 3DCoating!