====== Installing EAGLE 6.2 on Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin ======

Eagle 6.2 is still 32-bit software only, and my install of (X)Ubuntu 12.04 was a 64-bit one. So the first step is making sure I have 32-bit libraries available. I The following is overkill, only a subset of the below are actually needed. I hope I'll get back to this, testing what subset is actually needed:

<code>
sudo apt-get install lib32asound2 lib32gcc1 lib32ncurses5 lib32stdc++6
sudo apt-get install ia32-libs lib32z1 lib32z1-dev
sudo apt-get install zlib1g zlib1g-dev build-essential perl gcc-multilib
</code>

Eagle has since the start of development of the 6.x (5.90+) series for Linux been using libpng in version 1.4. Very few distributions ship this version (OpenSUSE, Puppy and Slackware are the ones I know of), so for recent Ubuntu versions, we must get a (32 bit) copy of this library from somewhere else:

<code>
wget http://slackware.osuosl.org/slackware-current/slackware/l/libpng-1.4.9-i486-1.txz
mkdir libpng-14-ia32
cd libpng-14-ia32
tar xf ../libpng-1.4.9-i486-1.txz
cd usr/lib
sudo cp libpng14.so.14.9.0 /usr/lib
cd /usr/lib
sudo ln -s libpng14.so.14.9.0 libpng14.so.14
</code>

Finally, fetch the Eagle installer, and run it as root:
<code>
wget ftp://ftp.cadsoft.de/eagle/program/6.2/eagle-lin-6.2.0.run
sudo sh eagle-lin-6.2.0.run
</code>

I prefer starting eagle from a terminal, and I prefer having it in path. The simplest way to accomplish this is:

<code>
sudo ln -s /opt/eagle-6.2.0/bin/eagle /usr/local/bin/eagle
</code>

If you prefer having an application icon in a menu:

<code>
cat <<EOF > /tmp/opt-eagle.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Type=Application
Exec=/opt/eagle-6.2.0/bin/eagle
Path=~
Name=EAGLE CAD 6
GenericName=EAGLE PCB design software
Icon=/opt/eagle-6.2.0/bin/eagleicon50.png
Terminal=false
Categories=Development
EOF

sudo mv /tmp/local-eagle.desktop /usr/share/applications
</code>