For those prefer installing apps via the classic apt method, you can now install Blender 2.92 via PPA in Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 20.10, and also Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 18.04.

The open-source 3D modeller software Blender 2.92 was released a few days ago. Features “a completely new workflow for editing meshes, new physics simulation methods, faster Cycles rendering, better compositing with Eevee, and so much more.”

Blender offers official Snap package, which runs in sandbox, and is available to install directly from Ubuntu Software. As well, a Linux portable package is available to download in its website. For those prefer the classic deb packages, Thomas Schiex’s PPA has made it for Ubuntu 20.04 and Ubuntu 20.10 uses.

1. Add Blender PPA:

Firstly open terminal from system application launcher. When it opens, run command to add the PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:thomas-schiex/blender

Type user password, no asterisk feedback, when it asks and hit Enter to continue.

The PPA does not support for Ubuntu 16.04 and Ubuntu 18.04, but another PPA do! It however requires a few more PPA for updated libaries, see the PPA description for detail.

2. Install or update Blender:

If you have an old version of Blender packages installed via apt method, open Software Updater (Update Manager) and update the software:

Or run commands in terminal to install / update the package:

sudo apt update

sudo apt install blender

3. Fix missing libLLVM-6.0.so.1 issue:

Blender 2.92 does not start in my Ubuntu 20.04, and it outputs an error when running from terminal:

/usr/lib/blender/blender: error while loading shared libraries: libLLVM-6.0.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

This can be easily fixed by running command:

sudo apt install libllvm6.0

Not sure if the problem exists in Ubuntu 20.10, but libllvm6.0 is not available in the Groovy repository.

Uninstall:

To remove the Ubuntu PPA, open Software & Updates and go to Other Software tab, then remove the relevant line.

To remove Blender installed via apt, run command in terminal:

sudo apt remove --autoremove blender

The Blender Foundation has recently announced the release of Blender 2.78. Here’s how to install or upgrade it via PPA in Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 14.04, and Linux Mint 18, 17.

What’s new in Blender 2.78:

• spherical stereo rendering support for VR
• a grease pencil for full 2D drawing and animations
• viewport rendering improvements
• freehand curves drawing over surfaces
• bendy bones support
• alembic support
• The Cycles Render Engine has NVIDIA Pascal support
• new physics capabilities, and various new add-ons.

Install/upgrade to Blender 2.78 via PPA:

Thomas Schiex is maintaining a PPA with most recent Blender release for Ubuntu 16.10, Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 14.04, and Linux Mint 17, 18.

So you can easily install Blender 2.78 or upgrade from a previous release by following the steps below:

1. Open terminal from Unity Dash, App Launcher, or via Ctrl+Alt+T keys. When it opens, run command:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:thomas-schiex/blender

2. To upgrade from a previous release, simply launch Software Updater and install the updates after checking for updates:

Or install Blender for the first time or upgrade Blender via command:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install blender

3. (Optional) To restore to the stock version of Blender in Ubuntu’s main repository, purge the ppa via command:

sudo apt install ppa-purge && sudo ppa-purge ppa:thomas-schiex/blender

Blender, an open source 3D content-creation program, has recently reached the 2.75 release, which features AMD OpenCL rendering and fully integrated stereo/multiview support.

Blender Foundation and developer community announced the release of Blender 2.75 on July 1st. The main highlights of this release are:

• Blender now supports a fully integrated Multi-View and Stereo 3D pipeline
• Cycles has much awaited initial support for AMD GPUs, and a new Light Portals feature.
• UI now allows font previews in the file browser.
• High quality options for viewport depth of field were added
• Modeling has a new Corrective Smooth modifier.
• The Decimate modifier was improved significantly.
• 3D viewport painting now supports symmetry and the distribution of Dynamic Topology was improved
• Video Sequence Editor: Placeholders can now replace missing frames of image sequences
• Game Engine now allows smoother LOD transitions, and supports mist attributes animation
• And: 100s of bug fixes and smaller feature improvements.

For details, release the announcement.

How to install/upgrade Blender in Ubuntu:

Blender website provides pre-built binary packages for Linux 32-bit/64-bit, you may read this post to install the official package and make a shortcut icon for Ubuntu desktop.

Since the official package is not well integrated with Ubuntu desktop, you can alternatively install Blender from Thomas Schiex’s PPA, and receive future updates through Software Updater.

To do so, run below commands one by one in a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) window:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:thomas-schiex/blender

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install blender

Note that there might be a small delay before a new release to be made into the PPA. You may check out the PPA web page for the Blender version.

In addition, to associate .blend files with Blender go to file’s context menu (right-click menu) -> Properties -> Open With tab -> select Blender software from the list and finally click the Set as default button.