Audacity

One-minute read
debian • bullseye • linux

I wanted to install Audacity, but the one provided by Debian is pretty old. No worries– Audacity provides the latest version as an AppImage!

❯ cd ~/.local/bin/

❯ wget https://github.com/audacity/audacity/releases/download/Audacity-3.1.2/audacity-linux-3.1.2-x86_64.AppImage

❯ sha256sum audacity-linux-3.1.2-x86_64.AppImage 
a40334424e687e3cdb14de4566d63f9136772d15d552e6401a6a966a964dde52  audacity-linux-3.1.2-x86_64.AppImage

❯ chmod +x audacity-linux-3.1.2-x86_64.AppImage 

❯ ln -s audacity-linux-3.1.2-x86_64.AppImage audacity

Easy peasy!

Screenshot of Audacity

One drawback to installing it this way is that it doesn't have an entry in the Xfce applications menu. So I added one!

❯ cat ~/.local/share/applications/audacity.desktop
[Desktop Entry]

Version=3.1.2
Type=Application
Encoding=UTF-8
Exec=audacity
Icon=audacity
StartupNotify=false
Categories=X-XFCE;Audio;
OnlyShowIn=XFCE;
Name=Audacity
Comment=Audacity audio editor

The "real" apps have their .desktop files in /usr/share/applications, but I put it in ~/.local/share/applications to signify that it's installed differently.

Then I logged out and logged back in and it was on the menu!

Screenshot of Xfce Applications menu

I had to look in /etc/xdg/menus/xfce-applications.menu to discover that I wanted to put it in the Audio category to get it in the Multimedia section of the applications menu (there is no "Multimedia" category).