MuseScore 2.0.3 for Linux available via PPA for Ubuntu and Mint

I have just finished upgrading the MuseScore packages in the Ubuntu PPA to version 2.0.3. It should work on Ubuntu versions 14.04 (Trusty), 15.10 (Wily), 16.04 (Xenial), and also on the various Ubuntu flavours (Kubuntu, Xubuntu, etc.) and Ubuntu-derived distributions such as Mint. If you already had 2.0.2 installed from the PPA then the upgrade should be automatic. If not, or if you have Ubuntu 16.04 and got 2.0.2 from the Software Centre instead, then you can upgrade manually via the Terminal. Of course, if you already have the official AppImage version of 2.0.3 then there is no need to install MuseScore from the PPA.

Installing or upgrading MuseScore from the PPA

This must be done from the command line. In Ubuntu you can open up a Terminal window by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T. You can the copy the commands below, one line at a time, and paste them in the Terminal. The shortcut to paste inside a Terminal window is Ctrl+Shift+V (not Ctrl+V).

# To add the PPA if you don't have it already:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mscore-ubuntu/mscore-stable

# Install or manually update MuseScore:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install musescore

Other useful commands:

# Show distribution version:
cat /etc/*release*

# Show installed MuseScore version:
mscore --version

# Show available MuseScore versions (to see if you already have the PPA):
sudo apt-get update
apt-cache madison musescore # will show that 2.0.3 is available if you have the PPA

Once you have MuseScore installed from the PPA future updates should be automatic (but see the note below).

Newly supported processor architectures

MuseScore has always been available on 32-bit (i386) and 64-bit (x86_64/amd64) Intel and AMD systems, but Ubuntu now supports a number of different architectures, including:

• armhf (32-bit ARM)
• arm64 (64-bit ARM)
• ppc64el (64-bit PowerPC)

These architectures are common in modern phones, tablets, some Chromebooks, and embedded devices like the Raspberry Pi. MuseScore is available for these systems, but users will need to be running Ubuntu Wily (15.10) or later. These devices often have limited resources and performance may not be as good as on standard x86 systems.

Note for future versions

If there is ever a MuseScore 2.0.4 then it will probably be available from the PPA as usual, but when MuseScore 3 is eventually released it may not be possible to release a PPA package for Ubuntu 16.04 or earlier due to the available Qt versions being too old. Users of these distributions will need to upgrade Ubuntu or install MuseScore's AppImage version instead. (Qt is a software library MuseScore relies on for cross-platform compatibility with Windows, Mac and Linux.)