Dark Artistry

novelWriter is a Python GUI program used for authoring novels and short stories. Pipx will isolate all the various libraries and source code without the need to create a virtual environment or simply installing in the system’s Python environment. For this how-to I will be installing on Fedora 37 but this should be a similar process on other Linux distributions using their package manager rather than dnf. On Ubuntu you can add the novelWriter ppa and install using apt if you prefer. I would bet Arch has an AUR.

Open the terminal and type:

pip -V

If you don’t get version info then you will need to install it.

sudo dnf install python3-pip

If you want to add a dictionary for spell checking you msy need to install a dictionary. The following will do the trick just select the language you need.

sudo dnf install hunspell-en-US

You can select the dictionaries from preferences in novelWriter.

Now we need PIPX. PIPX is a tool to install Python programs in an isolated virtual environment. It’s not used for Python programming modules. The following two commands will get it setup:

python3 -m pip install –user pipx

python3 -m pipx ensurepath

Now you simply install novelWriter with:

pipx install novelwriter

In order to add to the menus we can create a .desktop file. Type the following:

nano novelwriter.desktop

Add the following text and be sure if you download the icon to point to where you want to store the icon:

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=novelWriter
Icon=/path/to/icon/novelwriter.png
Exec=novelwriter

Save the file as:

.local/share/applications/novelwriter.desktop

Here is the icon.

Besides the icon and desktop files the you can find the pipx install in your home directory in .local/pipx/venvs/novelwriter

Simply delete that folder, icon, and desktop to remove it.