Freeplane installation for Ubuntu OS

This page explains how to install Freeplane for the Ubuntu operating system, there are 3 main ways to proceed.

First: check Java is installed

Make sure Java is installed:

• Choose Applications > Ubuntu Software center
• Type in the search field: Java
• In the list that opens, choose JDK Java 6 Runtime
• If you see "Remove", Java is already installed. If you see "Install", click it to install Java.
  
  

Option 1 : install from the official Ubuntu software repository

1. Freeplane is packaged for Debian/Ubuntu, you just need to run: apt-get install freeplane

If the Freeplane package for your distro is out of date, see option 2 or option 3 below (it requires download from SourceForge official Freeplane project hosting).

Option 2 : install with .deb file

For every Freeplane release, starting with 1.6.5, there is a .deb available which includes all libraries, so it works on Debian/Ubuntu.

• download the generic .deb: go to http://sourceforge.net/projects/freeplane/, click "Browse all files", navigate to "freeplane stable"
• download freeplane_<version>+upstream-1_all.deb
• install it using

dpkg -i *.deb

• this will create a menu entry for Freeplane, mime type mappings etc
• you're done ;-).

Option 3 : install with the binary package

1. Download Freeplane binary package

• For newest version goto http://freeplane.sourceforge.net/preview/ and download Freeplane_bin-XXXX.zip, in which XXXX is a shown version number.
• Or for the official version goto http://sourceforge.net/projects/freeplane/ and press download.
• Then choose Open with Archive manager, and press OK
  
  

2. Extract the freeplane directory

• In the download window press extract, select the location (e.g. Documents) and press Extract again.
• Then open the the directory where you extracted freeplane (Documents) and open the newly created Freeplane directory.
  
  

3. Then run freeplane

• In the extracted directory, double-click on Freeplane.sh and select Run (or run in terminal window). Now Freeplane opens and you can use it.
  

If you want you can customize the installation as follows.

4. For easy access, add Freeplane to Applications > Office:

• Right-click Apllications and select Edit Menus
• Select Office (left) and select Add Menu item (right)
• Type a name, e.g. freeplane
• Browse to the directory with freeplane, click freeplane.sh and press ok
• With freeplane selecte, press Properties
• Click on the icon on the left and browse via Documenten > FreeplaneXXX to the file freeplane.svg; and select it.

Now freeplane is added to Office with the freeplane icon.

5. For faster access, add the freeplane icon to the toolbar:

• Goto Applications > Office and right-click Freeplane.
• Select add this launcher to toolbar.
  
  

6. Now you can start freeplane by pressing its icon in the toolbar