Ubuntu

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  • Ubuntu is a Debian based Linux distribution and releases twice a year, with version numbers indicating the year and month of release yy.mm. Each release also has a nickname. (The first release came out in October 2004; Ubuntu 4.10 was also known as "Warty Warthog.")
  • All of Ubuntu's six-month releases receive security updates for 18 months. In addition, some releases are designated "LTS" for Long Term Support. LTS releases are officially supported with security updates (and backported to) for 3 years on the desktop, and 5 years for servers.
  • At present, GnuCash is NOT in Ubuntu's "Main" repositories, so updates must work their way through the Debian update process. Because of this situation, Ubuntu repositories usually contain a version of GnuCash that is a release or two behind the latest stable version.

Handy Links:


GnuCash package

Ubuntu has GnuCash available as a ready-to-install package. Just choose "gnucash" as a package to be installed.

More recent packages

The version of GnuCash and some of its dependencies in the official Ubuntu repositories tends to be outdated.

AqBanking @ ppa

You can get more recent versions of AqBanking via aqbanking-backports-ppa.

GnuCash @ Debian Archive

GnuCash (for Debian based distributions) can be downloaded from the Debian Archive which is primarily an archive for old distributions of Debian but also contains recent versions of GnuCash.

See http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/README.html.

As at 5th Jul 2018, the Debian Archive includes

  • GnuCash 2.6.15: should work in Ubuntu 16.04 and 16.10
  • GnuCash 3.0-1: should work in Ubuntu 18.04 (not tested)
  • GnuCash 3.2-1: unknown Ubuntu compatibility

To install:

  1. Uninstall and purge any previous version of GnuCash: archived version
  2. Download from http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/pool/main/g/gnucash/ (say by clicking on the required files in FireFox):
    1. gnucash_2.6.15-1_amd64.deb (another file may be needed if not using 64 bit Ubuntu on intel/amd)
    2. gnucash-common_2.6.15-1_all.deb
    Firefox will download to ~/Downloads
  3. In a terminal 
    cd ~/Downloads
sudo dpkg -i gnucash_2.6.15-1_amd64.deb gnucash-common_2.6.15-1_all.deb
    There will be complaints about some missing dependencies: libaqbanking35 etc.
  4. Open Ubuntu Software Centre from the Dash.
    It will say there is a problem and offer to repair it. Accept the offer.
    After 30 seconds or so, all the dependencies should have been installed.

GnuCash @ GetDeb

You may see references to "GetDeb," which once held a wide range of unofficial backported versions of popular applications. The site was maintained by a small group of private volunteers and their donors. Sometime before 2018 the site became stale and ultimately disappeared. In 2019 someone bought the domain and may be using it as a news site.

Standard Ubuntu Releases of GnuCash

If you not using any other software sources, when you install GnuCash, the version you get will be the version archived for your release of Ubuntu. GnuCash is not officially maintained for Ubuntu, so it is the latest Debian version available when the Ubuntu release was "frozen" (as listed below). Depending on your version of Ubuntu, you may additionally have to manually activate the "Universe" repository (using the Software Sources application) before GnuCash is visible.

If you are using an older (such as one of the LTS versions) of Ubuntu, you may want an updated version of GnuCash from an official repository. As newer versions of GnuCash become "back-ported" to your release, you can activate the Backports repository to install the latest back-ported upgrade. (If fidelity to the rest of the supported release is important to you, also be sure to "pin" your Backports repository to a lower priority than the other repositories using an /etc/apt/preferences file, and install only the upgraded packages you use.) For more backport details see https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuBackports

Because back-ported releases come from Debian packages, even back-ported versions are usually at least a bit outdated, too. :-( If you want the latest, your best bet is to build it yourself. (Note that the Debian maintainer has requested assistance and many users depend upon his work. If you have experience with Ubuntu or Debian, please consider helping package GnuCash.)


Ubuntu 22.04 ("Jammy Jellyfish"

GnuCash 4.8 is included in Ubuntu 22.04, released April 2022 https://packages.ubuntu.com/jammy/gnucash

Ubuntu 20.04 ("Focal Fossa")

GnuCash 3.8b is included in Ubuntu 20.04, released April 2020 https://packages.ubuntu.com/focal/gnome/gnucash

Ubuntu 18.04 ("Bionic Beaver")

GnuCash 2.6.19 is included in Ubuntu 18.04, released April 2018 https://packages.ubuntu.com/bionic/gnome/gnucash

Ubuntu 16.04 LTS ("Xenial Xerus")

GnuCash 2.6.12 is included in Ubuntu 16.04, released April 2016. https://packages.ubuntu.com/xenial/gnome/gnucash

Adding Shortcuts to the Launcher

To create shortcuts for KDE or Standard GNOME, see Desktop Shortcuts.

From Ubuntu 11.10 to Ubuntu 16.04, default Ubuntu installations included Unity, and its Launcher, which contained a set of icons for commonly-used applications. If you regularly open more than one set of GnuCash books you can add a useful right-click menu to the GnuCash icon in the Unity Launcher to open each of your sets of books independently. (Using this method you can have multiple sets of GnuCash books open simultaneously, which you cannot do using the menu within GnuCash.) See Unity Shortcuts for details.

Build GnuCash Yourself

There are a number of reasons you may wish to build GnuCash from source including:

  • releases available with some distributions can be out of date;
  • you may require access to newer features and recent bugfixes;
  • you may wish to work on bugfixes or new features for the Gnucash code.

Building GnuCash from the sources does not require high level technical skills.

Important: If you are building GnuCash for production purposes compile only from the latest STABLE release. (The development code may have unknown errors and bugs introduced during development.)

See Building#Gnucash for detailed instructions.

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