Looks like I have Chirp installed twice

Support and Help
21

This is pointing to python pip instructions which is a completely different package manager (tied to the python programming language), there is nothing in the distro that lets you manage such packages in the GUI … this might also explain why you can not find your second installation in any of the systems package manager tools …

I’d hoestly not use pip as someone who is new to linux, this is a tool that is rather for programmers and advanced users that prefer to use the terminal commandline for everyhing …

To remove the pip managed chirp package you can use

pipx uninstall chirp

That should then leave you with only the snap installed version …

22

Done!

But I still have these two guys:
image

23

Well, first of all I’m not sure pip will successfully remove the icon, do both icons start an app if you click them ?

If yes, it seems chirp comes in any possible shape or form you could somehow install an app on linux (pip, deb, snap, zip and I bet there are flatpaks and rpms too) which is a little counter productive here … did you use any of the other methods, like installing from a zip file or tar.gz ?

1 Like
24

In the past when I have had two identical icons, I test each one individually to make sure each opens the same program. If they each behave identically then I just delete one of the icons.
Not the most elegant way, but has always worked for me.

25

I did test each individually, as you indicated. They opened two different versions of the program.

26

Seems like you should do a bit of detective work and recalling.
The way to safely remove an application depends entirely upon the way you installed it.
There is no single safe uninstall method that works for everything.

So you have two versions installed.
Can you clearly explain…or point to a link…that describes step-by-step how you installed the version that you DON’T want?
One imagines you followed instructions from somewhere.

Uninstalling both (to start fresh) is the same problem twice. Each must be uninstalled using a method that depends upon how it was installed. No magic command to global-uninstall.

This is a common issue encountered by new users who simply aren’t used to the many choices offered by Free Software, and are more familiar with the few limited choices offered by previous proprietary OS.

There are commands we can offer that might help with the detective work, but those tend to be somewhat tedious.

1 Like
27

Too late. I think I right clicked on it in “Show Apps” and did uninstall. The other one I removed in App Center.

So, all are now cleared out.

Now, I need to figure out what the best way is to install this so it is easy and consistent to update. Again, going back to the instructions on their website…

28

That is great news!
Congratulations!

The website is the developers’ valuable, experienced opinion.
It may be appropriate for your use, it may not.
You may find doing your own Python integration worthwhile, or you may want someone else (a community volunteer) to handle it for you.
It’s a rich tapestry.

Advice: Try a few different way over the next few months. That’s how you can figure out which is “best” for you.

Pro tip: Remove one way (snap, deb, pip) entirely before installing another. A very common cause of broken behavior is remnants of one install conflicting with a newer version.

When you have a handle upon it all, we welcome your help directing newer folks in their own woes.

29

The funny thing is, other Ubuntu programs install simply, like Windows. For example, VLC, CPU-X, Notepad++ are all under “Show Apps”. Others install and update in App Center, like Firefox, Thunderbird, Brave, and oddly enough Notepad++.

How does one know whether it is removed entirely, or if it has remnants of a prior install? Is there any way to determine this? Also, how does one avoid this going forward?

30

The answer to that is a whole book-chapter.

You avoid it by sticking to AppCenter, which will properly install and fully remove deb packages and snap packages.

31

OK, so I went back to “AppCenter”, and installed it there again.

As soon as I clicked on “Open”, this came up:
image

Now what?

Go ahead, try it for yourself.

I find it useful to have the latest version of this.

Thank you.

32

If you want the latest version under all conditions, meaning that you don’t want the several-months delay while volunteers do the packaging, then you must learn the skills required to install the upstream version from their website using whatever method the developers chose.

If you want the easiest way to install, then use the packaged but slightly older versions in App Center.

Advice: Start with the easy way while you learn the skills to avoid breaking your system.

33

Could someone please do me a favor? Install Notepad++, and then go look at it in a couple days or weeks. You’ll see that it is updateable right from the “?” menu. Why is it so easy in one case, yet not in another?

34

Looks like it follows this formula:
https://archive.chirpmyradio.com/chirp_next/next-20250530/chirp-20250530-py3-none-any.whl https://archive.chirpmyradio.com/chirp_next/next-20250606/chirp-20250606-py3-none-any.whl

35

Using the above links, and that methodology, added to their instructions here:

Running CHIRP on Linux

This page describes how to get the newer python3-based CHIRP-next running on Linux. Note that this procedure is completely different from how chirp-daily was installed, and is not compatible with it. In case it’s not clear, chirp-daily will not run on any modern Linux distro, and chirp-next will not run on anything older than about ubuntu 22.04 (circa 2022) or so.

1. Install distro packages

Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, Raspbian, etc

$ sudo apt install python3-wxgtk4.0 pipx

Fedora and compatible

This was tested on Fedora 37 with python 3.11. The same procedure should work on all current versions of fedora running python3.

$ sudo dnf install python3-wxpython4 pipx

2. Install CHIRP (and Python dependencies)

Download the chirp-yyyymmdd-py3-none-any.whl file located under the folder corresponding to the latest date.

The next steps should work for all versions of Linux using pip, assuming you have the base dependencies from the distro installed above. On all recent distros, you must use pipx to install CHIRP separated from the system python environment. However, because some libraries from the system environment are required (packages from above) you must use the flag to enable their use. Use of the wheel download is recommended.

$ pipx install --system-site-packages ./chirp-yyyymmdd-py3-none-any.whl

NOTE: Use the filename you actually downloaded (ex: chirp-20240522-py3-none-any.whl), the above is just an example.

3. Run CHIRP

Now you can run CHIRP once from the command line with:

$ ~/.local/bin/chirp

The first time CHIRP is launched it should pop up a prompt to add a .desktop file for the current user. Select yes if you want to have the icon installed into the application menu (the activities menu in gnome) to launch CHIRP.

If you want to run CHIRP from the command line and simply using chirp does not work please check your PATH to verify it is complete. If not that can be fixed by editing ~/.bashrc or ~/.bash_profile to add that to the existing $PATH. If the PATH is configured properly then CHIRP should be able to launch with the chirp command. Common locations would be ~/.local/bin and /usr/local/bin.

Following the steps above (without sudo) installs the app as a user level app and it will only be accessible to that user. Using sudo for a system-wide installation is deprecated and not recommended on modern distros.

4. Update CHIRP

Once CHIRP is properly installed, upgrades to newer versions are done with two simple steps:

  1. Download the newer file.
  2. Uninstall the old version: pipx uninstall chirp
  3. Install the updated version by re-doing step 2 above

Troubleshooting

Serial port permissions

Note that you may need to add your users who want to use CHIRP to the group that owns the serial ports. This issue is often indicated by an “access denied” error when accessing serial port. First determine the USB port of your device, and then the following command should add your user to the proper group:
Note that “ttyUSB0” should be replaced with the actual device that identifies your connection to the radio and that “$USER” is a system variable that identifies the username of the individual running the command.

sudo usermod -a -G $(stat -c %G /dev/ttyUSB0) $USER

If that made a change, you will then need to log out and back in (or maybe even reboot) for it to take effect.

(Optional) Newer wxPython

You may want to install a newer wxPython, depending on what your distro ships. For Debian-derived distros (including Ubuntu and Mint) you can do that with a command like:

pip3 install -U -f https://extras.wxpython.org/wxPython4/extras/linux/gtk3/ubuntu-20.04 wxPython

This is only recommended for older distros, like Ubuntu 20.04.

Check the directory listing for other distro versions and use the closest match to what you’re on. NOTE that this will not work for non-x86_64 machines (like the Raspberry Pi) as there are no binary builds for those platforms.

Python or other version requirements

If you are running on an older distro, you may see complaints about either the python version or other system libraries being too old, such as the following:

ERROR: Package 'chirp' requires a different Python: 3.9.2 not in '<4,>=3.10'

In general, we try to keep in mind the versions of packages available in current and recent distro releases and try not to push the requirements past those points unless we need to. But, if you see something like the above, then you likely need to update to a newer distro release. You can find some version specifics about python requirements here and dependent packages here.

You can find out the (default) version of python available in your distro by doing the following:

$ python3 --version
Python 3.9.2

The other major system dependency that is needed is wxPython. Once you have installed your distro’s package for it (see the top of this page), you can check the version by doing this:

$ python3 -c "import wx;print(wx.__version__)"
4.0.7

The yattag package may not be installable in pipx

In late 2024, the yattag python package (on which chirp depends) may not be installable in very new versions of pipx. This is not a CHIRP bug, so please do not report it as such. At least on Debian-derived distributions you can work around this by running:

$ apt install python3-yattag

To get the distro-supplied version of the library. Note that python3-yattag is in the universe package set, so make sure you have that enabled.

Files (0)

…
and I come up with this way of updating:
pipx install --system-site-packages https://archive.chirpmyradio.com/chirp_next/next-20250606/chirp-20250606-py3-none-any.whl

The only thing that changes are the month and day; the same 4 numbers, two times.