Linux FAQ

Q. Which distros of Linux does Leap Motion support today?
A. Ubuntu 12.04 LTS or later

Q. How do I install the Leap Motion package?
A. Run:
     sudo dpkg --install Leap-*-x64.deb

Q. What if I'm on 32-bit Ubuntu?
A. Run:
     sudo dpkg --install Leap-*-x86.deb

Q. How do I install the 32-bit Leap Motion software on 64-bit Ubuntu?
A. If you have some reason for doing this, for Ubuntu 12.10 and older please
   prepare your system with the following command:
     sudo apt-get install ia32-libs
   For Ubuntu 13.04, the convenience alias ia32-libs has been removed and you
   must explicitly install:
     sudo apt-get install libc6:i386 libX11-6:i386 libgl1:i386 libglu1:i386 \
       libxi6:i386 libxrender1:i386 libsm6:i386 libfontconfig:i386 sni-qt:i386 \
       libfreetype6:i386 libxinerama1:i386 libasound2:i386
   For Ubuntu 13.10 and newer, the multiarch process may be entirely different.

Q. How do I uninstall?
A. Run:
     sudo dpkg -r leap
   Or if you installed the 32-bit package on a 64-bit system:
     sudo dpkg -r leap:i386

Q. Which dependency packages are required?
A. Mesa OpenGL and libXxf86vm to name a couple. dpkg or your package manager
   of choice will report any missing dependencies.

Q. How do I install the missing dependencies?
A. If you have a mostly complete development environment, you might get lucky
   and not require any additional libraries. Otherwise, you can manually
   install with commands such as:
     sudo apt-get install libgl1-mesa-dri libgl1-mesa-glx
   On Ubuntu 12.10 and 13.04, you may need to substitute with
   libgl1-mesa-{dri,glx}-lts-quantal or libgl1-mesa-{dri,glx}-lts-raring.
   For a package manager that can automatically install dependencies, try
   gdebi.

Q. I get a long list of warnings when installing through the Ubuntu Software
   Center GUI.
A. The GUI installer will run Lintian and report warnings such as recommending
   against placing the binaries under /usr/local/bin. You may click the option
   to proceed anyway. Alternatively if you use dpkg from the command-line it
   will not run Lintian and will not display these warnings.

Q. How can I install on Fedora?
A. For Fedora 21 and later, first install alien and convert Leap-*-x64.deb
   into a rpm package as follows.
     sudo yum update
     sudo yum install alien
     sudo alien -rv --scripts Leap-*-x64.deb
   Next, run:
     sudo rpm -ivh --nodeps --force leap-*-2-x86_64.rpm

Q. How do I uninstall on Fedora?
A. Run:
     rpm -ev leap-*-2-x86_64.rpm

Q. How do I start the Leap Motion pipeline?
A. On Ubuntu the Leap Daemon should already be running. You can then run:
     LeapControlPanel
   From there you can right-click the tray icon to get a drop-down menu with
   various options.
   To restart the daemon (if necessary), run:
     sudo service leapd restart
   On non-Ubuntu distros, if leapd is not installed as a service, you may run:
     sudo leapd

Q. Where is the rest of the Linux documentation?
A. Most of our notes regarding Linux are in this README.

Q. Which window managers are supported?
A. GNOME with Unity, the default for recent releases of Ubuntu. You should
   interact with your desktop locally as it is unlikely to work through VNC or
   any other remote desktop connection.

Q. Can I use the Leap Motion Linux SDK inside a virtual machine?
A. As of today this does not work well. Oracle VirtualBox does not have fully
   functional USB emulation in 64-bit mode. Even in 32-bit, you USB
   authentication is not reliable and you may require special OpenGL drivers
   to run the Visualizer.

Q. LeapControlPanel seems to be running but no tray icon appears.
A. For Ubuntu 12.10 and earlier, the Unity desktop environment uses a whitelist
   to avoid intrusive tray icons. Add LeapControlPanel to the whitelist with:
     gsettings set com.canonical.Unity.Panel systray-whitelist \
       "$(gsettings get com.canonical.Unity.Panel systray-whitelist | sed "s/]$/, 'LeapControlPanel']/")"
   If your system tray whitelist becomes messed up over time, you may reset it
   with:
     gsettings reset com.canonical.Unity.Panel systray-whitelist

   For Ubuntu 13.04 or later we have a new problem.  Qt 5 does not yet support
   Status Notifier Items (SNI) via the sni-qt plugin. If you are running
   Unity Dash, look carefully in the top-left corner and you may see a
   tiny Leap icon hidden next to or inside the dash. You can then right-click
   that icon. We are working on a proper implementation to match the functionality
   that existed with Qt4.

   If you still cannot find the tray icon, you can at least skip to the
   settings panel with:
     LeapControlPanel --showsettings

Q. LeapControlPanel crashes on startup because it cannot find libqxcb.so
A. Qt 5 has more dependence on plugins, and you could hit this error if you
   install the software to a non-standard location. You may be able to
   work around or debug this issue using the QT_PLUGINS_PATH and
   QT_DEBUG_PLUGINS environment variables.

Q. The GUI reports that the Leap Daemon is not running.
A. First, attempt the basic troubleshooting steps just like on Windows or Mac
   OS X. Run:
     sudo service leapd status
   And check your cable, do not connect through a USB hub, verify that other
   devices work through that same USB socket. If you can install Windows on
   the same system, verify that the Windows version of the Leap Motion software
   works on this system.

Q. It still reports that the daemon is not running!
A. There could be any number of problems remaining. To execute leapd directly and
   see the output, run:
     sudo service leapd stop
     sudo leapd

Q. Fails to launch the recalibration or diagnostic visualizer applications
   form the GUI.
A. For debugging purposes you may run any of the helper applications directly
   from the command-line, e.g.
     Visualizer
     Recalibrate

Q. leapd was working before, but reports no data now.
A. One common pitfall is running more than one instance of leapd at a time.
   If you plan to run leapd directly from the command-line, first disable the
   service:
     sudo service leapd stop
   To inspect, run:
     ps -A | grep leapd
   and kill off any rogue processes.

Q. Where can I get Leap Motion App Home for Linux?
A. App Home is not supported on Linux at this time.

Q. Where can I get Playground for Linux?
A. This is included in the distribution and will be installed at
   /usr/bin/Playground

Q. Where can I get Shortcuts (OS control application) for Linux?
A. Shortcuts does not support Linux at this time. You may find
   some mouse emulation examples on developer.leapmotion.com

Q. How to install on another Linux distro such as CentOS?
A. At this time we are only supporting recent versions of Ubuntu. However, if
   you'd like to port the package to another distro you probably have
   sufficient tools at your disposal. To view the Debian package, unpack it
   with the 'ar' and 'tar' commands and take a look. The 'alien' package
   converter mentioned above may also come in handy.

Q. I have too many issues when trying to run the LeapControlPanel GUI. These
   involve dependencies, window manager issues, Mesa OpenGL problems, or my
   video card driver.
A. You can use leapd without the GUI. It runs as a daemon.
   Note that to change any configuration settings you will have to edit
   ~/.Leap\ Motion/config.json
   We do not have any documentation for the various settings, but you could
   figure things out by playing around on Windows.

Q. (SDK downloaded separately) Sample.java compiles, but when attempting to
   run, I get an error about unable to load libLeapJava.so
A. Java seems to have trouble searching for native libraries without some
   guidance. Try:
     LD_LIBRARY_PATH=. java -classpath .:LeapJava.jar Sample

Q. (SDK downloaded separately) How do I build and run Sample.cs?
A. For the C# example, first install mono:
     sudo apt-get install mono-gmcs
   From there, building Sample.cs should be the same as on Mac OS X.

Q. (SDK downloaded separately) How do I build and run Sample.cpp or Sample.py?
A. The C++ and Python examples work out of the box and the command-line syntax
   is similar to that on Mac OS X.

Q. I have a question that is not answered in this README.
A. Please go to the developer portal and post in the forum or questions
   section.

Q. I am a Linux guru and can tell you how to do <insert something here>.
A. Great! Please post your suggestions on the forum.