Zotero is our favorite research tool and the means how we work on bibliography collections.

As of today Zotero is not distributed any more in form of a Firefox plugin. The fifth version of this popular bibliography manager replaced the former standalone version.

Since most of us have a Linux based laptop we need to install Zotero without the official installer.

Zotero can be installed from packaged sources:

We will try to install Zotero from the official sources:

  • Download the official archive (https://www.zotero.org/download/);
  • Uncompress the archive under ~/.local/opt/;
  • Link the Zotero executable under a directory in your $PATH, e.g.:
$ ln -s ~/.local/opt/Zotero_linux-x86_64/zotero ~/.local/bin/zotero
  • Start Zotero from the console, lock the program icon to the launcher, which creates a launcher copy under ~/.local/share/applications/zotero.desktop.

That’s it!