Zotero Standalone Linux

Download Zotero standalone, unzip to /opt/

sudo tar -xf Zotero-*.tar.bz2 -C /opt/

Place the following in ~/.local/share/applications/zotero.desktop

#!/usr/bin/env xdg-open
[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=Zotero
GenericName=Bibliography Manager
Icon=/opt/Zotero_linux-x86_64/chrome/icons/default/default48.png
Exec= /opt/Zotero_linux-x86_64/zotero %f
Categories=Office
Terminal=false

By default zotero will place all its data in ~/.zotero. Knowing this you can save any highlighting and comments into the PDF document as long as its in the same location and name, zotero will sync it up.

Updates

This was written for zotero version 4, they have since updated to version 5. Which will focus on the standalone application only. The new location for data by default will be ~/Zotero, but if you are migrating from the firefox add-on it will be in ~/.mozilla/firefox*. They promised to tidy up the data folder.

Update: 2020 March 23

Zotero can be backed up by zipping up your profiles and data:

tar cvfj 2020-March-23_zotero_backup-data.tar.bzip2 Zotero/
tar cvfj 2020-March-23_zotero_backup-profile.tar.bzip2 .zotero/* 

Copy it to the new machine. You might need to change some configurations to point to the new location. e.g. if you move to a new machine with a diferrent username.

This is example, I want to replace the string home/petemaynard/ to home/freethink/. This should be done everywhere which it is found. In my case was my profile’s prefs.js and pkcs11.txt file.

sed -i 's/home\/petemaynard\//home\/freethink\//g'  zotero/c7wl9rga.default/prefs.js
sed -i 's/home\/petemaynard\//home\/freethink\//g'  zotero/c7wl9rga.default/pkcs11.txt

25 Jul 2017 | Tags ( Linux )