This gist follows my new pattern of installing vendor binaries to user $HOME rather than /opt or /usr/local. Installing to user home has 2 basic benefits: (1) avoids permissions issues; and (2) avoids conflicts with system software.
Here is my new practice when installing Blender:
- Download the latest LTS release from https://www.blender.org/download/lts/.
- Extract the contents to ~/.local/blender.
$ mkdir ~/.local/blender
$ tar xJf blender-x.xx.x-linux-x64.tar.xz -C ~/.local/blender --strip-components=1
- Create a symlink for blender under ~/.local/bin:
$ ln -s ~/.local/blender/blender ~/.local/bin/blender
- Setup the application shortcut:
$ cp ~/.local/blender/blender.desktop ~/.local/share/applications
- Put the blender product icon where the menu system can find it:
$ cp ~/.local/blender/blender.svg ~/.local/share/icons
That's it!