Installation

Installation and first launch

BachelorPad+ Lite runs on Windows 10, Windows 11 and Linux (x86-64). macOS is not built, and ADR-0072 says why.

There is an installer for Windows, a package for each family of Linux, and a plain archive for either, for anyone who would rather unpack a folder and run it (ADR-0093). Every one of them holds the same program. Wherever it is installed, what the product keeps about itself goes in your user profile, and Where it puts things lists every directory.

What it needs

Windows 10 or 11, x86-64, and nothing else. The C runtime is built into the executable, so there is no Visual C++ redistributable to install first.

Linux, x86-64, with glibc 2.35 or later: Ubuntu 22.04 and later, Debian 12 and later, Linux Mint 21 and later, Fedora 36 and later (ADR-0087). The release is built on the oldest of those and refused if it would need anything newer, so the list is checked rather than hoped. RHEL 8 and 9 and Debian 11 are older than that and are not supported.

It also loads the libraries any desktop session already has -- fontconfig, xkbcommon (with its X11 half), and Wayland or X11. The .deb and .rpm declare them, so your package manager fetches anything missing. For the AppImage or the archive on a minimal install, on Debian or Ubuntu:

sudo apt install libfontconfig1 libxkbcommon0 libxkbcommon-x11-0 libwayland-client0 libx11-xcb1 libxcursor1 libxi6

Download

From the releases page:

You have	Download
Windows 10 or 11	bachelorpad-lite-<version>-windows-x86_64-setup.exe
Windows, no installer	bachelorpad-lite-<version>-windows-x86_64.zip
Ubuntu, Debian, Mint, Pop!_OS	bachelorpad-lite_<version>_amd64.deb
Fedora, openSUSE	bachelorpad-lite-<version>-1.x86_64.rpm
Any other Linux	bachelorpad-lite-<version>-x86_64.AppImage
Linux, no package	bachelorpad-lite-<version>-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
Arch	PKGBUILD, for makepkg -si

The downloads are unsigned, and you should know that before you click

Windows SmartScreen will warn you when you download the installer and again when you first run it: choose More info, then Run anyway. On Windows 11 with Smart App Control turned on, it may refuse to run at all -- the zip is no different there. That is code signing not yet in place (ADR-0094). Self-signing was refused outright, because a self-signed certificate is only satisfied once you install a root certificate you have no reason to trust, which is a worse thing to ask of somebody than a warning is.

What is offered instead is a checksum, and it is not nothing: it answers tampering in transit, which is the threat a certificate answers worst.

sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS.txt --ignore-missing

(Get-FileHash -Algorithm SHA256 .\bachelorpad-lite-1.0.0-windows-x86_64-setup.exe).Hash

Compare it with the line in SHA256SUMS.txt beside the download.

Windows

With the installer

Run bachelorpad-lite-<version>-windows-x86_64-setup.exe. It never asks for administrator rights: it installs for you alone, in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\BachelorPad+ Lite, adds a Start menu entry, and appears in Settings > Apps with an uninstaller.

It offers two things, both unticked:

• Open with, which puts the program in Explorer's Open with list and in Settings > Default apps for text and Markdown files. It does not make itself the default for anything; that stays your choice, made in Windows' own settings (ADR-0012).
• A desktop shortcut.

From the zip

Expand-Archive bachelorpad-lite-1.0.0-windows-x86_64.zip C:\Apps\BachelorPadLite
C:\Apps\BachelorPadLite\bachelorpad.exe

Shortcuts are yours to make, and File > Set as Default Editor registers file types for wherever you unpacked it.

Both the installer and the zip contain:

File	What it is
bachelorpad.exe	The program
bpad.cmd	A short spelling, for the command line
bachelorpad.ico	The icon Explorer draws for registered file types
io.github.dboles99.bachelorpluslite.png	The icon the window shows
app-help/	The in-app help, opened by Help > User Guide
LICENSE, THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md	GPL-3.0-only, and the crates it links
BUILD.txt	Version, commit, target, and that it is unsigned
README.md	The project's own front page

Both icons ship because they are read by different things: Explorer needs a real .ico, and the toolkit that draws the window can decode only PNG and JPEG (ADR-0068).

Linux

Ubuntu, Debian, Mint, Pop!_OS

sudo apt install ./bachelorpad-lite_1.0.0_amd64.deb

Fedora, openSUSE

sudo dnf install ./bachelorpad-lite-1.0.0-1.x86_64.rpm      # Fedora
sudo zypper install ./bachelorpad-lite-1.0.0-1.x86_64.rpm   # openSUSE

Either package puts the program in your applications menu, with its icon, and bachelorpad and bpad on your PATH. The program and its help live together in /usr/lib/bachelorpad-lite/.

Arch

Build and install from the PKGBUILD attached to the release:

makepkg -si

Anything else: the AppImage

chmod +x bachelorpad-lite-1.0.0-x86_64.AppImage
./bachelorpad-lite-1.0.0-x86_64.AppImage

It is one file and installs nothing. To have it in your applications menu, run File > Set as Default Editor from it.

The archive

tar xzf bachelorpad-lite-1.0.0-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
cd bachelorpad-lite-1.0.0-linux-x86_64
./bachelorpad

bpad beside it is a symlink to the same binary. The executable bit and the symlink are both set inside the archive, so neither needs restoring.

Flatpak

A manifest for Flathub is written (ADR-0093) and not yet published there. Until it is, use one of the above.

First launch

The window opens on an empty, unsaved document called Untitled. Nothing has been written anywhere yet. Once you type, the recovery journal starts keeping a copy of the unsaved work in your profile, so a crash does not cost it -- see Undo and recovery.

Three things worth doing once:

1. Pick a theme. View > Theme offers Light, Dark, Organic and Green, plus System, which follows the desktop.
2. Look at Privacy. The Privacy menu governs what this product records about the documents you open -- see Privacy. The default is deliberately modest, and it is worth knowing what it is rather than assuming.
3. Decide about file associations, if you want double-clicking a .txt to open this. File > Set as Default Editor never seizes anything; it shows you what it would do and hands you a script to run. See Making it your default editor.

Where it puts things

Wherever the program is installed, everything it writes about itself goes in the usual per-user locations:

	Windows	Linux
Settings	%APPDATA%\bachelorpad\config.toml	$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/bachelorpad/, else ~/.config/bachelorpad/
Notes index, recent files	%LOCALAPPDATA%\bachelorpad\data\	$XDG_DATA_HOME/bachelorpad/, else ~/.local/share/bachelorpad/
Recovery journals	%LOCALAPPDATA%\bachelorpad\state\	$XDG_STATE_HOME/bachelorpad/, else ~/.local/state/bachelorpad/

Settings roam and the rest does not, on purpose: an index, a cache and a log have no business crossing a network at sign-out.

Help > Diagnostics prints every one of these paths as resolved on your machine, which is more reliable than this table.

Removing it

Installed with	Remove with
The Windows installer	Settings > Apps, BachelorPad+ Lite, Uninstall. It removes the program, its shortcuts and the Open with entries it added
The zip or the archive	Delete the folder
The .deb	sudo apt remove bachelorpad-lite
The .rpm	sudo dnf remove bachelorpad-lite
The AppImage	Delete the file

None of them removes your settings, recent files, recovery journal or notes index -- the three directories above. Delete those as well to remove everything.

If you registered file types with File > Set as Default Editor, undo that first: run the -remove.reg file it wrote beside the registration on Windows, or delete the two files on Linux, as Making it your default editor says. This product will not delete anything out of your profile on your behalf, and ADR-0070 explains why that is deliberate rather than an omission.

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This page is generated from docs/user/01-installation.md and edits made here will be overwritten. Change the source and open a pull request.