Install on Debian

Basic Information

The information further down about the available KiCad packages might not always be fully up to date and correct due ongoing development. For getting an overview about the current most recent version for the KiCad packages within the various Debian releases please have a look at packages.debian.org.

Please note that Debian stable releases don’t get updates for existing packages except security updates. Packages within the Stable releases usually get newer and recent versions through backports repositories. KiCad is here no special case.

To be able to install versions from a official Debian Backport repository you need to extend your sources.list configuration if not yet happen. If you are running Debian Bullseye please create a file /etc/apt/sources.list.d/bullseye-backports.list if you don’t have an similar entry already.

# /etc/apt/sources.list.d/bullseye-backports.list
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bullseye-backports main contrib non-free

If your system is still running Debian Buster create a similar file (if not done somehow already or created by the installer similar) /etc/apt/sources.list.d/buster-backports.list like above except the content is pointing to buster-backports.

# /etc/apt/sources.list.d/buster-backports.list
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian buster-backports main contrib non-free

Once you’ve added one of these files you need to update the database of the package managing system so your preferred package manager is knowing about the new added source and the package versions from there.

sudo apt update

For more information about backports you might want to visit the Debian Wiki site about Backports and / or also the Backports website.

Other KiCad related packages and their relations

For more flexibility the various KiCad packages are provided by also various binary packages you might want need to install beside the kicad main package that is containing the KiCad applications. For example there are existing dedicated packages for the footprints, symbols, templates and 3D-models and also KiCad documentation related packages which aren’t necessarily automatically get installed (depends on the configuration of your system) if you install the kicad package.

If you are looking for all KiCad related packages you can search for them simply by your preferred package manager tool, e.g. by apt.

apt search kicad

For a useful working with KiCad you will need to have installed the following packages: kicad and kicad-libraries and sometimes also the package kicad-demos. Typically these packages get installed automatically if you haven’t changed the system default on installing of recommended packages. Please don’t install the package kicad-common directly, it’s a transitional package and will go away, it can get removed if you’ve installed this.

You can get more information about the relation between the various kicad packages in Debian please have a look at a graphic on the Debian wiki page for KiCad packages.

KiCad packages within the Debian releases

Debian 9 Old-Old-Stable (Codename Stretch)

The Stretch release isn’t supported any more and wont get updates, please upgrade your system to at least Debian Buster!