If you are running Ubuntu 10.10 or its derivatives and you are itching to try the latest version of digiKam, you don’t have to go through the rigmarole of compiling the application yourself. Philip Johnsson did the hard work for you and released the neatly packaged version of digiKam on his PPA, so you can easily install the latest beta version of the next major release of digiKam with a minimum of fuss.

Before you proceed, remove the digiKam and Kipi plugins installed on your system. Fire up the terminal and add three repositories:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:philip5/extra

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:philip5/kubuntu-backports

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:kubuntu-ppa/backports

sudo apt-get update

Use then the following command to install the latest beta version of digiKam:

sudo apt-get install digikam2 kipi-plugins2

That’s all there is to it. Of course, you should keep in mind that this is beta software, so the usual “use it at your own risk” disclaimer applies here.