Best way of installing Lazarus on Linux (Debian?)

[Mario]

Hi,

I installed Lazarus first from the Debian 12 distro, after a while I realized the version was pretty old. Then I used the .debs provided by the project itself. That was much, much better.

BUT then I tried to installed the docking windows package. That went sort-of well, it built the IDE again and then restarted but... nothing. And how could it be different, the binaries are somewhere in /usr/local/ and the user mode cannot overwrite them.

So that's why I ask - what is the recommended way to install Lazarus? Compile from source directly by the user? Same thing for FPC?

[Mario]

Oh apologies, I see there is a more appropriate subforum. Sorry.

[JuhaManninen]

Run "startlazarus" instead of "lazarus". Rebuilt binaries go to a local configuration directory. Startlazarus knows which binary to use.
Getting Lazarus sources from Gitlab, compiling and running in-place is a good option, too. No installation is needed then.

[sfeinst]

Getting Lazarus sources from Gitlab, compiling and running in-place is a good option, too. No installation is needed then.

Agreed.  This is what I use for Lazarus on Debian.

[Mario]

Thanks, that's helpful! Got the IDE in docked mode running.