How to install Invoice Ninja on Chrome OS
If you’re a freelancer or someone who regularly relies on invoices for payments, and you own a Chromebook, Invoice Ninja is an app you’ll want to explore. Excelling on Linux, and seamlessly compatible with Chrome OS’s Linux integrations, Invoice Ninja can be a game-changer for your Chromebook.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through the process of enabling Linux support on your Chromebook and installing the Invoice Ninja application. But, before diving into this guide, it’s crucial to have an Invoice Ninja account. If you haven’t set one up yet, you can find detailed instructions for creating an account on the official Invoice Ninja website.
How to enable Linux on your Chromebook
Invoice Linux-compatible application works efficiently on Chrome OS once you enable Linux support. Start this process by clicking on the clock located in the Chrome OS dashboard. Following this, click the gear-shaped icon to open the Chrome OS settings.
Once in the settings menu, scroll down to find the “Advanced” section. After locating “Advanced,” click on it to access its various options. Within this section, look for “Developers” and select it.
Moving to the “Developers” area, search for the “Linux development environment” subsection. In this area, locate and click on the “Turn on” button.
Pressing the “Turn on” button within the “Linux development environment” will commence the download of Debian Linux into a container on your Chromebook, which includes a terminal application. Typically, this setup doesn’t take long.
After the download is complete, the Chrome OS terminal app will launch. In the terminal, find and select “Penguin” to enter the command line interface. Then, execute the apt update and apt upgrade commands to refresh the Debian container on your Chromebook.
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade -y
With these updates, your Chromebook is set to run Linux-based applications like Invoice Ninja.
How to install Invoice Ninja – Flatpak
Invoice Ninja is available as a Flatpak for users to download and install. This method of installation is perhaps the easiest way to set up the app, as Flatpak apps regularly get updated.
To start the installation process, you need to set up the Flatpak runtime. To do that, launch the Chrome OS terminal application. Once the terminal app is open, find the “Penguin” option, and select it with the mouse.
When the “Penguin” option is selected, you’ll have access to the Linux command line on your Chromebook. From here, use the apt install command below to install the “flatpak” package.
sudo apt install flatpak
When you’ve finished installing the “flatpak” package, you’ll have successfully configured the Flatpak runtime for your Chromebook. However, you’ll now need to set up the Flathub app store. Do this by running the flatpak remote-add command below.
flatpak --user remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://dl.flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
With the Flathub app store set up on your Chromebook, the Invoice Ninja application is installable. To set it up on your system, use the following flatpak install command.
flatpak install flathub com.invoiceninja.InvoiceNinja
Now that the Invoice Ninja Flatpak app is set up on your Chromebook, you’ll be able to run it any time you want by launching it from the “Linux Apps” folder in the Chrome OS app menu.
How to install Invoice Ninja – Linux Portable
Invoice Ninja is best installed on Chrome OS via the Flathub app store as a Flatpak. However, there is another way to get it working: the Linux Portable package.
The Linux portable package is distributed via the Invoice Ninja GitHub page and doesn’t need to be installed anywhere. Instead, users can download it, extract it, and run it as is.
To start the setup process, use the wget command to download the latest release of Invoice Ninja Portable. This command will place the portable archive in the Chrome OS Linux container home directory.
wget https://github.com/invoiceninja/admin-portal/releases/download/v5.0.152/Invoice-Ninja-Linux-Portable.tar.gz
Once you’ve downloaded the archive, create a folder called “invoice-ninja”. Then, extract it with the tar command.
mkdir -p ~/invoice-ninja
tar xvf Invoice-Ninja-Linux-Portable.tar.gz -C ~/invoice-ninja/
Once the files are extracted, run the program directly from the terminal by executing the following command:
~/invoice-ninja/invoiceninja
When you run the command above, the Invoice Ninja app will launch. However, only use the Portable version of the app if the Flatpak one refuses to work correctly.
