How to install Geary 3.32 on Linux
The Geary email client has a new update available ready for download. Geary 3.32 adds in a ton of excellent features and promises to make your emailing experience much nicer on the Linux desktop.
What’s new?
Geary 3.32 isn’t a massive release in terms of features. The developers haven’t chosen to re-invent the wheel. You won’t see the entire concept of Geary changing. Instead, the developers have introduced some useful, common-sense updates which are sure to make fans of the popular Linux email client eager to update.
With Geary’s new update, they’ve chosen to add in more tight integrations to the Gnome desktop, such as sticking to the release cycle of Gnome Shell every six months. They’ve also tightly integrated it into Gnome Contacts so that Geary can now grab contact information from the Gnome contacts system, rather than having to use a built-in one. Additionally, they’ve improved email server detection, introduced a compact settings menu, added in a cleaner new desktop icon, and even given users the ability to customize the look of the composer window with CSS code.
Install Geary 3.32
The 3.32 release of the Geary email client introduced some new and exciting things, and we covered that earlier. However, it also introduced a different program distribution style. As of now, the developers of Geary will not be pushing out the latest 3.32 version through the standard packaging formats (DEB, RPM, etc.) Rather, updates will now be delivered through the Flatpak packaging system. The change means that if you have Geary 0.12 installed on your Ubuntu desktop, you won’t be able to run the update command, or click “Updates” in the Ubuntu Software Center for the latest version.
Going with Flatpak might seem outlandish, given that a release of the Geary email client already exists inside of many Linux distribution’s software sources, but it’s understandable mainly because packaging apps for a large amount of Linux operating systems are cumbersome and takes a lot of time.
Enable Flatpak
Given that the new Geary email client is being distributed to users as a Flatpak package, it’s essential to go over how to get the Flatpak runtime working on Linux.
Setting up the Flatpak runtime is getting easier, as more and more Linux distributions embrace it. Distributions like Fedora are starting to enable it by default!
If you’d like to get Flatpak support working on your Linux operating system, open up a terminal window and install the “flatpak” package. Alternatively, open up Gnome Software, click the search button, type in “flatpak” and install it that way.
Having issues getting the Flatpak system up and running? Check out our in-depth tutorial on Flatpak! It covers how to install and enable the software on nearly every distribution out there!
Geary 3.32 – Flatpak instructions
Installing the latest release of the Geary email client via Flatpak involves subscribing your Linux PC to the Flathub application repository. To do this, you must open up a terminal window. Then, use the following command.
Note: do not run this command with sudo or root! You may inadvertently subscribe the Root user, rather than your own!
flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
With the subscription installed, you should now be able to work with the apps on Flathub. From here, you’ll be able to install the new release of Geary using the following command.
flatpak install flathub org.gnome.Geary
Geary 3.32 – Gnome software
The Geary email application can also be installed through the Gnome Software application if the command-line isn’t your thing. To do it, ensure that you are subscribed to Flathub. Then, open the app store, click on the search icon, and type in “Geary” in the box.
In the search results, click on Geary. Then, read the page and make sure that it says “Flathub” as a source. Then, find the “Install” button and click it to start the installation.
Once Geary is installed, launch it through Gnome Software by clicking on the “Launch” button.
Other ways to install Geary 3.32
As stated earlier, it’s critical you get the Geary application through Flatpak, as the developers can quickly deliver updates this way. However, this isn’t the only way to get access to the new update. In this section of the guide, we’ll go over the other, non-Flatpak ways to enjoy the new Geary release.
Arch Linux instructions
Unsurprisingly, the Arch Linux people have already taken the new 3.32 release of Geary and put it up in their “Community” software repository. If you’re on Arch and don’t want to use the Flatpak release, here’s how to install it.
Start by opening up the /etc/pacman.conf file in Nano.
sudo nano -w /etc/pacman.conf
Scroll through the configuration file, locate “#Community” and remove the # symbol from in front of it. Do the same for the lines directly underneath as well.
After you’re done editing, save the file with Ctrl + O and exit with Ctrl + X. Then, re-sync Pacman.
sudo pacman -Syy
Finally, install the new version of Geary with:
sudo pacman -S geary
Source code instructions
The source code for the new release of Geary is free to download and compile. While there are no direct instructions on the website, there is information in the release file itself.
To download the source code, open up a terminal window and use the wget command.
wget https://download.gnome.org/sources/geary/3.32/geary-3.32.0.tar.xz
Extract the code with:
tar xf geary-3.32.0.tar.xz
Move into the code folder with the CD command.
cd geary-3.20.0
Take a look at the “README” file to learn how to compile and install the new version of Geary!
cat README
