How to install Audacity 2.1.0

Question

The Ubuntu Software Centre has an older version and downloading Audacity from the website gave me a folder that doesn't seem to have a binary to start the program. How do I install version 2.1.0 in Ubuntu 14.10?

Solution 1

You have to compile Audacity from source. The "README.txt" as part of the 2.1.0 package states that:

To compile on Linux, Mac OS X and other Unix systems, execute these commands:

  ./configure
  make
  make install  # as root

Running these commands should install Audacity 2.1.0 onto your system providing you have the necessary dependencies to compile and install it. The Audacity Sourceforge page states that:

Dependencies

The wxWidgets library is required. Audacity 2.1.0 requires wxGTK 2.8.12. The libsndfile library is also required and is included in Audacity obtained from SVN. Installation of other libraries is optional.

CMake is required to build libsoxr which is now the Audacity default resampling library.

Ubuntu should already have the required dependencies for Audacity, however you need development packages in order to compile. You could do this manually using apt-get install but because Audacity is already in the Ubuntu repositories we can run apt-get build-dep audacity to install all of the required development packages for us.

Now all you need to do is configure, make, and install Audacity as described in the readme file.

Solution 2

Run these commands in a terminal

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/audacity
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install audacity

Source: http://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/2015/04/install-audacity-audio-editor-2-1-0-in-ubuntu-from-ppa/

Comments

[Nick Bailuc]

i tried installing assuming i had all the dependencies since the previous version worked. it gives me the error that i need wxwidgets. how do i install that, i cant find a tutorial that isnt half-ass like "heres a link to half a program. figure it out yourself". how do i install the required dependencies?

[Michael Lindman]

I have included additional information in my answer regarding the installation of dependencies.

[Mauricio Gracia Gutierrez]

this is outdated and inaccurate - check answer by Sepero below

[Khushraj Rathod]

Why use a ppa? Use the prebuilt binaries, or if you want the latest version, then the source code...