Help : can not launch Zotero on Linux

Hello everyone,

I'm writing my PhD dissertation and have to present it a three months, so it's the final line.

Because Zotero was not connecting well with my LibreOffice and Firefox (Java environment was not working well), I have reinstalled Zotero and the Connectors. It worked once. But since then, I don't know how to launch Zotero. I have not managed to install the shortcut in my toolbar, I don't find the right program lines to launch it from the Terminal (I am not a coder !), and when I click on the "launch" item in the software's file, nothing happens. I have asked the university library's informatics desk, but they don't know...

Can someone help me to find back the use of Zotero ?

I'm on Linux Mint 22.1 Cinnamon 6.4.8.

Thanks a lot !
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    For Linux, we can't really help beyond what it says here:

    https://www.zotero.org/support/installation#linux

    Linux systems are too heterogeneous, and we have to assume that people running Linux are able to troubleshoot problems themselves.
  • Which type of installation are you using? Flatpak, tarball or deb package? Which version of it are you running? (Not a dev, just a linux user)
  • Though for Linux Mint, you can and should just install the .deb package as described in the installation instructions.
  • I have installed Zotero via the Zotero official website.

    Its the version 9, 64bit.

    For the moment, my Zotero folder is on my /home in a folder for my applications.

    To try, I have extracted the Zotero download folder in /opt as recommended. But when I follow the line instructions, the command "set_launcher_icon" is said to be unfounded. And the command "ln -s /opt/zotero/zotero.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/zotero.desktop" does not work because "the file (already) exists".

    I'm still blocked... I'm ready to share screen if it can help.
  • Again, though, any reason you're not using the .deb package which handles these steps?
    Also, you can just run Zotero from terminal and then create a shortcut.
  • "Also, you can just run Zotero from terminal and then create a shortcut."

    I wish I knew how to do this, but I don't know how to code. If you have code lines to suggest me, it would be great.
  • You keep ignoring half of my posts and I don't understand why? There is a way to install for linux that's specifically for folks less comfortable with the commandline and it works particularly well for distros in the Debian family like Ubuntu and Mint. If you're struggling to get things to work via the tarball, that's the way to go.

    If you want to run Zotero from the commandline (but again: why not use the simple option), do something like
    cd /opt/zotero
    ./zotero


    but the fact that you're getting an error for the set_launcher_icon script suggests you may have downloaded something incorrectly. Also, your symlink command suggests the desktop file symlink already exists and you may want to delete it in ~/.local/share/applications
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