yesterday I managed to install Linux Mint on my computer. Using the application manager I also successfully installed dt - but unfortunately not the latest version.
How can I do an update?
thx for all your valuable answers
Christoph
First of all: I’m a Debian user and have no Mint experience, and limited Ubuntu experience. That being said…
darktable cannot be updated, you need to install the latest full version. Mint, which is based on Ubuntu, uses deb packages.
I do believe it is save to use the Ubuntu based deb packages on Mint systems. Mint being the more stable, but a tad behind in the very latest software versions compared to Ubuntu. Ubuntu deb packages can be downloaded from here:
OBS darktable latest stable release
Choose Ubuntu → Grab binary packages directly (If you are on Mint 20 select an Ubuntu 20 package).
Have a look here if you don’t know how to install a single deb package on Mint: Linux Mint - Installing softwares in linux (skip to the Offline installation section).
It is basically like this, from a terminal:
cd /to/download/location/
sudo dpkg -i darktable_3.6.1-1.1_amd64.debYou can get the flatpak of the latest version from the Mint Software center.
Wow - thx a lot.
it worked almost immediately!
br
Christoph
thx - I am a total beginner in Linux. I have absolutely no idea what flatpak is & thank to @Jade_NL my problem seems to solved
Christoph
i thought the flatpak version had no cl support? didn’t when i tried it on kubuntu
If you have an nVidia card, you can have openCL with the darktable flatpak via a flatpak plugin. Intel and AMD are out of luck at this time.
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ah so you need a plugin - that’s a bit poor. i went back to the normal install anyway 
Not really poor, its just another flatpak package, and its maintained by the freedesktop team, not by the darktable team. It works exactly the same as if you were using distro packages.
from the point of view of having never known this and to not find it out before then it is not a good experience. i’ve mentioned this before in another thread on here and no one mentioned this solution. so the solution may be easy but if it’s not readily available as an option (how do i find out about it?) then it’s a poor user experience 
Well the flatpak support here is mostly me, and I can only cover so much ground. So if I the extent of the user experience, then of course it is going to be poor.
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I totally identify with and sympathize with your plight.
Altho Linux may be very powerful and flexible, and altho there are many developers doing all kinds of neat stuff with it gratis (thank you very much!), new users of Linux find it very hostile and frustrating because there are so many issues just like this where you have no idea what package or add-on a particular software might need nor where to find it, nor even that you need it! You can spend hours trying to track down the vital information you need and you still might not find it if you don’t know exactly where to look. Personally I don’t have the time or desire to go through that kind of ordeal.
Info on getting latest version available from the darktable website:
https://www.darktable.org/install/
It’s no hardship to look on the website of a software package, to learn the best way to install the most up to date version
That’s only partially true…
Just one example:
Mint, for example, isn’t mentioned on that page and so are other Linux distro’s. Don’t assume that new Linux users know that Mint is deb based and can probably use an Ubuntu package.
So, in general: If in doubt you should ask here.
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Yes, a fair comment. Perhaps it would be good to add info about Linux Mint needing to download the Ubuntu based package for Darktable?
https://software.opensuse.org/download.html?project=graphics:darktable&package=darktable
This worked for me on mint a couple months ago.
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Yes, that’s where I normally download Darktable binaries for Linux Mint