How to install Balsamiq Mockups on Ubuntu 13.04

You can install Balsamiq Mockup on Linux / Ubuntu but Balasmiq don’t provide good instructions. I have no idea why they don’t spend a little time and write documentation properly. Anyhow, here is how I installed Balsamiq on my Ubuntu 13.04 laptop.

If you are looking for Instructions for installing Balsamuq Mockups for Ubuntu 13.10 – please visit this post

Step 1 – Download Adobe Airhttp://airdownload.adobe.com/air/lin/download/latest/AdobeAIRInstaller.bin.

wget http://airdownload.adobe.com/air/lin/download/latest/AdobeAIRInstaller.bin

Step 2: Make the installer excutable.

chmod +x AdobeAIRInstaller.bin

Step 3: Try running the installer.

sudo ./AdobeAIRInstaller.bin

Step 4: If your computer is 64bit then you will get this error:

"error while loading shared libraries: libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory"  

So, you will need to install the 32bit libs:

sudo apt-get install ia32-libs-gtk

Step 5: Try running the installer again

sudo ./AdobeAIRInstaller.bin

Step 6: You might get this error:

Sorry, an error has occurred. Adobe AIR could not be installed. Install either Gnome Keyring or KDE KWallet before installing Adobe AIR.

To fix this run the following command:

locate libgnome-keyring.so

I got (but you might get something different).

/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgnome-keyring.so.0
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgnome-keyring.so.0.2.0

You will need to pass reference to these libs when running the installer.

sudo LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu ./AdobeAIRInstaller.bin

If this works for you then goto Step 7. If this doesn’t work then you could make symbolic links to the libs. For 64bit:

sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgnome-keyring.so.0 /usr/lib/libgnome-keyring.so.0
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgnome-keyring.so.0.2.0 /usr/lib/libgnome-keyring.so.0.2.0

For 32 bit:

sudo ln -s /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libgnome-keyring.so.0 /usr/lib/libgnome-keyring.so.0
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libgnome-keyring.so.0.2.0 /usr/lib/libgnome-keyring.so.0.2.0

Finally – try running the installer again.

sudo ./AdobeAIRInstaller.bin

Then remove the symbolic links:

sudo rm /usr/lib/libgnome-keyring.so.0
sudo rm /usr/lib/libgnome-keyring.so.0.2.0

Step 7 – Download Balsamiq

wget http://builds.balsamiq.com/b/mockups-desktop/MockupsForDesktop64bit.deb

Step 8 – Install Balasmiq

sudo dpkg -i MockupsForDesktop64bit.deb

Step 9 – Make a cup of tea and some mockups

32 thoughts to “How to install Balsamiq Mockups on Ubuntu 13.04”

  1. Thanks a lot, works like a charm on Xunbuntu 13.04 32bits.

    Step 7, for 32bits:

    wget http://builds.balsamiq.com/b/mockups-desktop/MockupsForDesktop32bit.deb

    There a free licence of Balsamiq available for the *Ubuntu developers* community :

    Organization name: Canonical UX
    Serial Key: eNrzzU/OLi0odswsqnFOzMvPy0xOzFEIjagxNDIxMQASBiBQ41xjaAgAQYUNaw==

    “Feel free to blog about this. We are very proud to be able to help out the open
    source community.” (source: http://www.mail-archive.com/launchpad-users@lists.launchpad.net/msg01068.html)

    FYI, there is a balsamiq free alternative runable on Ubuntu, called PENCIL: http://cheateinstein.com/category-design/pencil-better-alternative-for-balsamiq-mockups-on-ubuntu/

    1. Thanks for the comment. I tried Pencil but frankly Balsamiq is easier to use and works really well. I brought a 5 user license for our company and it was really good value.

    1. I’m not sure I quite understand you questions. A a bmml file is the file format for Balsamiq Mockups. Just download and save the bmml files onto your computer (anywhere) and in the load Balsamiq. Then simply -> File -> Open.

  2. I am developing WireframeSketcher wireframing tool and we pay a lot of attention to Ubuntu support. It’s a Java app with GTK UI bindings so it feels much more like a native app. It can be easily installed from the deb package or directly from Software Center. If don’t want to fiddle with AIR then consider WireframeSketcher as an alternative.

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