Installing QCAD from the Installer

This page describes the installation of QCAD under Linux from the self-extracting installer (.run) or from the archive (.tar.gz). Both contain the same files and install QCAD into a single directory in your home directory. Administrator rights are not required.

Choose the package that matches your system as described under Installing QCAD under Linux. Version numbers are written as 3.x.x below. Replace this with the actual version number of the QCAD release you have downloaded, for example 3.32.9.

Installation Using the Installer (.run)

Open a terminal application, for example GNOME Terminal, Konsole or xterm, and change to the directory the installer was downloaded to:

cd ~/Downloads

Make the installer executable and run it:

chmod a+x qcad-3.x.x-pro-linux-qt6-x86_64.run
./qcad-3.x.x-pro-linux-qt6-x86_64.run

This creates the directory ~/opt/qcad-3.x.x-pro-linux-qt6-x86_64 containing the QCAD application. Nothing is written outside your home directory.

Installation Using the Archive (.tar.gz)

Extract the archive into any directory of your choice. In this example we use ~/opt:

mkdir -p ~/opt
cd ~/opt
tar xfvz ~/Downloads/qcad-3.x.x-pro-linux-qt6-x86_64.tar.gz

Launching QCAD

Change into the directory QCAD was installed into and start QCAD from there:

cd ~/opt/qcad-3.x.x-pro-linux-qt6-x86_64
./qcad

Troubleshooting

If QCAD does not start, your system might be missing libraries QCAD depends on. You can check for unmet dependencies as follows:

cd ~/opt/qcad-3.x.x-pro-linux-qt6-x86_64
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=. ldd qcad-bin

If any lines end with “not found”, install the corresponding packages using the package manager of your distribution.

If dependencies cannot be resolved, use the Flatpak package instead, as described under Installing QCAD from a Flatpak. A Flatpak ships with all required libraries and is independent of the libraries installed on your system.

Uninstalling

The installer and the archive install QCAD into a single directory. To uninstall QCAD, simply delete that directory:

rm -rf ~/opt/qcad-3.x.x-pro-linux-qt6-x86_64

Your drawings and your QCAD configuration are stored elsewhere and are not affected.