How to Install, Setup and Use LibrePCB?

LibrePCB is a free & open-source software, cross-platform, easy-to-use EDA (Electronic Design Automation) suite to draw schematics and design printed circuit boards. Using this, we can develop printed circuit boards. It comes with easy to use GUI, project management and library, schematic, board editors.

Most of EDA tools are proprietary, close source and vendor specific i.e. Altium, whereas LibrePCB is FOSS, vendor neutral with growing worldwide community.

In this module, we will see how to install LibrePCB on our Linux PC.

Features of LibrePCB

LibrePCB is an open source EDA tool powered by worldwide community
No costs, No restrictions, No online account, No unnecessary complexity.
Cross-platform — including Windows, Linux and macOS, and up to 16 languages
Easy to start interface, no need to spend days on documentation
All files created by LibrePCB are human-readable, canonical and conceived very carefully.
LibrePCB can also be used fully offline.
For everyone from Beginners to Professional.

Installing LibrePCB

There are multiple ways through which we can install LibrePCB on our Linux PC. We will discuss all these steps one by one.

Installing via AppImage
Installing via Flatpak
And installing with the Snap package Manager

We will discuss all these methods one by one.

LibrePCB is contained in several app stores / software centers, just search for “LibrePCB” to find and install it. If it doesn’t exist, use one of the installation options below. We are not discussing this method, because sometimes we are not able to find “LibrePCB” there.

Method 1: Installing via AppImage

Open your browser, we will go to the LibrePCB website.

Home Page Of LibrePCB Website — Home page of LibrePCB website

And click on Download button. Right now, we want to install it on Linux, so scroll for Linux and click on Download AppImage for Linux to download AppImage file.

Selecting AppImage For Linux 1 — Selecting AppImage for Linux

Now we have to make this AppImage file executable, so open the Terminal on your Linux system and run the following command to make the file executable.

chmod a+x Downloads/librepcb-1.0.0-linux-x86_64.AppImage

But first either change the directory to where the file is located or give the full path to fill in the command line for me, it is in “/home/Downloads/”. Also don’t exactly copy my code as the file name may change based on the version you may have downloaded.

I have changed the directory to download before executing the commands, as you can see in the image below.

Giveing Execute Permission Of File To Every User 1 — Giving execute permission of file to every user

Now we have to run this executable file so, in a fresh Terminal tab, run the below command:

./Downloads/librepcb-1.0.0-linux-x86_64.AppImage

Launching LibrePCB From Terminal — Launching LibrePCB from terminal

Now, LibrePCB window open up in some time.

Interface Of LibrePCB — The Interface of LibrePCB

Our LibrePCB is ready to use. Now, we look at other method of installing LibrePCB.

Method 2: Installing via Flatpak

If you don’t have installed flatpak on your Linux PC, follow this guid e and install using the commands according to your OS. For Debian, follow below given command:

sudo apt install flatpak
sudo apt install gnome-software-plugin-flatpak
flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

Here apt is for Debian based distros, for Red hat based distros it will be yum or dnf. Change apt according to your distribution.

Installing Flatpak 1 — Installing Flatpak

To complete setup, we may need to restart our system. After that, we can install LibrePCB.

Now, Install LibrePCB using flatpak:

flatpak install flathub org.librepcb.LibrePCB

Intalling LibrePCB From Flatpak — Intalling LibrePCB from flatpak

We can check all the installed flatpak application using below command:

flatpak list

List Of Installed Flatpak Applications 2 — List of installed flatpak applications

We can launch this LibrePCB using below command:

flatpak run org.librepcb.LibrePCB

Method 3: Installing via Snap

Again, if you don’t have installed snap on your Linux PC, follow this guide and install using the commands according to your OS. Note that if you are using Ubuntu, snaps are preinstalled on your system. For Debian, follow the below command:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install snapd
sudo snap install core

Now, Install LibrePCB using snap:

sudo snap install librepcb

Installing LibrePCB Using Snap — Installing LibrePCB using snap

LibrePCB has installed using snap. We can check all the installed snap application using below command:

snap list

List Of Snap Applications 2 — List of installed snap applications

Now, we have successfully installed this application using all above-mentioned three methods, you can just launch the application from the app grid/Menu.

First Pop Window Of LibrePCB — First pop-up window of LibrePCB

Usage of LibrePCB

We can launch a new project by clicking on File tab.

Click On File Tab And Launch New Project — Click on **File** tab and launch new project

Provide a project name for our project and click Next.

Now, we start building our circuit board project.

Conclusion

In this module, we discussed LibrePCB A EDA tool which is used for drawing schematics and designing printed circuit boards, and how to install it on our Linux system. We installed LibrePCB on our Linux in three different ways, one way by using AppImage, secondly via flatpak and finally with snap package manager.