Edit: Due to the fact that this article is old, the installation instructions may not work anymore. In order to successfully install the latest version of FreeCAD, please access the freecad tag and open the latest article (the one on top).
The latest installation instructions for FreeCAD
Hello Linux Geeksters. As you may know, FreeCAD is an open source CAx RAD, developed in OpenCasCade, Qt and Python. Among others, it has support for macro recording, creating workbenches and has the ability to run as a both a server and a dynamically loaded application. The users can import and manage the following CAD models: IGES, STEP and BRep and the following meshes: STL, BMS, AST and Wavefront OBJ formats. The latest version available is FreeCAD 0.15, which is still under development.
In this article I will show you how to install FreeCAD 0.15 on Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn, Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr, Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin, Linux Mint 17.1 Rebecca, Linux Mint 17 Qiana, Linux Mint 13 Maya, Pinguy OS 14.04, Elementary OS 0.3 Freya, Elementary OS 0.2 Luna, Deepin 2014, Peppermint Five, LXLE 14.04, Linux Lite 2.0 and other Ubuntu derivative systems.
Because it is available via PPA, install FreeCAD on Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04 and derivative systems is easy. All you have to do is add the ppa to your system, update the local repository index and install the veusz package. Like this:
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:freecad-maintainers/freecad-stable
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install freecad
Optional, to remove freecad, do:
$ sudo apt-get remove freecad