Zotero is an open source reference manager, produced by the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media. To say ‘reference manager’ understates what it is capable of: you can use it to organize your reading, collaborate with others, and produce bibliographies in a matter of seconds.
Having started off as a Firefox plug-in, it has recently released a beta of a stand-alone application. More versatile than the browser-based version, it is however a little more tricky to install on Linux. (On OS X it installs via the usual click, drag and drop.) Hence this post. These instructions are based on Ubuntu 11.10, with the Unity desktop, but they should work for any variant. Certainly it works for my preferred flavour, Xubuntu.
Warning: this is beta software! Warning 2: these instructions come with no guarantee of success!
1: Download the Zotero standalone beta tarball. For a 32bit chip, you’ll want the x86 version, for a 64bit get the x86_64. If you don’t know what type of system you have, open a terminal and type:
uname -m
You’ll get something like i686 if you are running a 32 bit system, and x86_64 if you have a 64 bit system. Note that you may be able to run the 32 bit version of Zotero on a 64 bit system, and that even if you have a 64 bit chip, your version of linux might be 32 bit.
2: Unzip it. You’ll now have a folder called Zotero_linux, appended with -i686 for the 32-bit version, and -x86_64 for the 64bit. Right click on it, choose ‘properties’ from the menu, and then the permissions tab, and tick the ‘Program’ box to allow it to run as a program.
3: As it stands, Zotero will work. But having the package in your home directory is a bit messy, and means it isn’t available for all users of the computer. So to be both neat and useful, open a terminal and type
sudo mv ~/Downloads/Zotero_linux-i686/ /opt
This will move Zotero to your /opt directory. Note that because this is Ubuntu, the command has to be run with sudo. For many other linux distros, you’ll have to log in as root.
4: So far so good, and so easy. The next step is to get the system to recognize that it has been installed. To do this you have to make a .desktop file in usr/share/applications. Copy and paste the following text into a file called zotero.desktop:
#!/usr/bin/env xdg-open [Desktop Entry] Type=Application Name=Zotero GenericName=Bibliography Manager Icon=/opt/zotero_linux-i686/chrome/icons/default/default48.png Exec= /opt/Zotero_linux-i686/zotero %f Categories=Office Terminal=false
Then send it to usr/share/applications, where most of the .desktop files reside:
sudo mv zotero.desktop /usr/share/applications
5: And finally, find and run it. Go to the ‘dash’ in the dock – or Application Finder, under Accessories in the Xubuntu menu – search for zotero, and it should show up under applications. Click and all being well, Zotero will start up. If you want to keep it in the dock, right-click the icon and tick the option to keep it there.
Uninstalling: To remove Zotero, open a terminal and type: sudo rm -r /opt/Zotero_linux-[version] and sudo rm /usr/share/applications/zotero.desktop. The users own files are in the hidden folder ~/.zotero.
Further support for Zotero can be found on their documentation pages and forums. This post is copyright under the CC BY license. Use to your heart’s content, but please acknowledge me!
Thanks for the helpful guide!
I thought it might be helpful to add that – if you installed the 64 bit version – the paths to the icon and executable will be:
Icon=/opt/Zotero_linux-x86_64/chrome/icons/default/default48.png
Exec= /opt/Zotero_linux-x86_64/zotero %f
Cheers,
Jeremy
Thanks – this is very helpful and worked perfectly, except there is an error in the zotero.desktop file in the Icon line. It should read “Icon=/opt/Zotero_linux-i686/chrome/icons/default/default48.png”. What you have above will not link to the zotero icon and there will be a question mark in the launcher instead. But other than that, this is great – thanks again!!
Thanks for catching this – I’ve corrected the post.
Hi!
Thanks for the great post. Following the directions has very easily allowed me to install Zotero standalone! Please keep up the good work!
Cheers,
Steven
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Thanks so much for this. Makes so much sense. Much appreciated.
All the best. John
This is great–thanks for the help.
FWIW, I ran into a problem with Step 2, as I was unable to “tick the ‘Program’ box to allow it to run as a program.” The box just wouldn’t tick. I did some searching and it seems like in some similar cases it worked to move the folder to the desktop first. Didn’t help me, no matter where I put it. I was able to go into the folder and change zotero.jar (I think) and it ran fine after that (though I haven’t done much with it except play with duplicates!)
A perfect guide!!!
Muchas Gracias
Happy Australia Day!
Thanks for the simple guide, much appreciated. Good to know how easy it is to create those .desktop files.
Perfect! Thanks so very much. Thanks also to Michael for the 64-bit info.
I am new to Ubuntu and having a spot of bother with step 4. Do you have to create the document ‘zotero.desktop’? If so then I understand you have to paste the text in once created but I don’t know how to create it in the first place.
Hi Jake,
Just open Gedit, the default text editor on Ubuntu, copy and paste the highlighted text into it, and then save it with the name ‘zotero.desktop’
HTH
John
Thanks for this — very helpful!
I noticed as well that I didn’t need to make the “Zotero_linux” directory executable as a program (in step 2), but I did make “/Zotero_linux-x86_64/zotero” executable in that way (or it was already set up that way, I installed a while back). Everything else worked perfectly. Thanks.
Thanks a lot for this thorough guide! It works perfect for me except for one thing:
When I start Zotero, keep it in the panel, then start it through a click on the icon in the panel, I end up with two icons in the panel. When I do this again, I have three icons in the panel, and so on.
Does anyone maybe have an idea what is going wrong?