LyX Packages for Ubuntu

Though I love Ubuntu, there is one aspect of its package management that I am significantly less than thrilled with, the pace of incremental updates.

Prior to release, Ubuntu (and other software manufacturers) spend a great deal of time testing, tweaking and otherwise ensuring that the software they ship is of high quality.  This is a good thing, it ensures that the platform is stable and works well.

However, there is also a downside.  It means that (other than very minor security upgrades), software only gets updated during Ubuntu’s six month refresh cycle; and if you don’t upgrade to the newest Ubuntu, you will often get stuck using older versions of the software.  Even if those older versions have known bugs and issues.

Most of the time, this isn’t a tremendously big deal.  After all, Ubuntu is completely free and upgrades are mostly painless.  Sometimes it is, though, and there is one case in particular that is effecting current Ubuntu (10.04) users.

By default, the most recent version of Ubuntu (10.04, Lucid Lynx) ships with version 1.6.5 of LyX.  Version 1.6.5 is a great version.  For the most part, it is stable, and has five revisions worth of bugfixes.  But even though it is good, it isn’t perfect.  1.6.5 works well, except when deployed on a system with Qt 4.6 (or newer).

For many divers reasons, LyX 1.6.5 and Qt 4.6 don’t get along very well.  The program may randomly crash (especially if the Table of Contents pane is open).  It may run sluggishly.  The keyboard might freeze, or lag.  There are other problems.  Incompatibilities between LyX 1.6.5 and Qt 4.6 is the most oft reported bug in the LyX Bugtracker.

What is infuriating (at least from the developer’s side) is that most of these issues were fixed in version 1.6.6 of LyX, and further refined in version 1.6.7.  Unfortunately, because Ubuntu ships with 1.6.5, users are not able to enjoy the enhancements.  As a result, they continue to be frustrated by problems.  (And the developers continue to be plagued by bugs we’ve already fixed.)

Until now, that is.

Yesterday, I spent a little bit of time updating the packages for the next version of Ubuntu (10.10, Maverick Meerkat).  While doing so, I created a PPA for Lucid users.  Here’s how you can use it to update to the most recent version.

Open up your terminal and then type the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:lyx-outline-devel/lyx-stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

The first command adds the PPA I created for LyX updates.  The second will update your sources.  The last will install the new version of LyX.  After you’ve added the software sources, any further updates will happen automatically.

I’ve tested the packages pretty thoroughly, but that does not mean they are perfect.   If you have any troubles, please:

1. Leave a comment here
2. (Better) Send a note to the LyX developers mailing list (lyx-devel@lists.lyx.org)
3. (Best) File a bug on Launchpad (this will simultaneously send email to the interested parties and create a forum so that we can work on it).