Ubuntu – Inkscape fails to install on 14.04

14.04inkscapesoftware installation

I am trying to install Inkscape on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS using apt-get. After a seemingly successful installation, I cannot seem to run Inkscape. I get the following terminal output:

    matt@linuxDesk:/$ sudo apt-get install inkscape
    Reading package lists... Done
    Building dependency tree       
    Reading state information... Done
    inkscape is already the newest version.
    0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 6 not upgraded.
    matt@linuxDesk:/$ inkscape
    The program 'inkscape' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing:
    sudo apt-get install inkscape

I have a second computer, also running Ubuntu 14.04, and I was able to install and run Inkscape on that computer without issue. I ran 

    find /usr -name inkscape

on the computer with the working install, and the command returned a huge number of files. Running the same command on the computer with the broken install yields:

    /usr/lib/mime/packages/inkscape
    /usr/share/menu/inkscape
    /usr/share/doc/inkscape

This suggests to me that apt-get thinks that Inkscape is installed, but then for some reason only installs some of the files. I've tried completely wiping Inkscape from the computer and starting over using:

    sudo apt-get purge inkscape
    sudo apt-get autoremove

These commands did not seem to remove all inkscape files, so I even tried going in and removing them manually. Still to no avail.

After trying various permutations of the above, I attempted to install from source. I (think) that I got all of the dependencies, and ./configure runs fine. Unfortunately running the makefile fails:

    matt@linuxDesk:~/Downloads/inkscape-0.48.4$ make
    make  all-recursive
    make[1]: Entering directory `/home/matt/Downloads/inkscape-0.48.4'
    Making all in src
    make[2]: Entering directory `/home/matt/Downloads/inkscape-0.48.4/src'
      CXX    desktop.o
    In file included from desktop.cpp:91:0:
    widgets/desktop-widget.h:242:32: error: stray ‘,’ at end of member declaration
         GtkWidget *commands_toolbox,;
                                    ^
    make[2]: *** [desktop.o] Error 1
    make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/matt/Downloads/inkscape-0.48.4/src'
    make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
    make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/matt/Downloads/inkscape-0.48.4'
    make: *** [all] Error 2
    matt@linuxDesk:~/Downloads/inkscape-0.48.4$

Any suggestions would be much appreciated – I'm quite out of ideas. Thanks!

Best Answer

Figured it out. The problem was that I had added a PPA that was no good. I don't fully understand how they work, but my guess is that it was essentially pointing the apt-get inkscape commands to the wrong place. I went in and deleted this PPA using the following commands:

    cd /etc/apt/sources.list.d/
    sudo rm inkscape*

After doing that I ran the following commands to uninstall and reinstall inkscape:

    sudo apt-get purge inkscape
    sudo apt-get clean
    sudo apt-get update
    sudo apt-get install inkscape

Now running the command inkscape in terminal opens Inkscape correctly.

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