Anki Installation in Template VM not propagating to AppVM

User Support
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1

Hello Friends,

I want to start by mentioning that I did use the search function and found that using a standalone VM could be a solution. I also found a German topic discussing Anki, but it was based on the Fedora template, where the solution was straightforward since Fedora includes Anki in its software repository.

However, I’d still like to try and get this working with my current setup.

I’ve managed to set up AppVMs for other applications, such as Signal, Obsidian, and BitTorrent, each with its own template and AppVM. Here’s what I’ve done to set up an offline-only AppVM for Anki:

  1. I created an Anki template VM based on the Debian 12 template.
  2. Within this template VM, I connected to the internet, downloaded, and successfully installed Anki. It works perfectly within the template.
  3. Next, I created an AppVM for Anki based on this template. However, when I try to launch Anki in the AppVM, nothing happens. I can see the Anki icon in the app menu, but clicking it doesn’t start the application. Additionally, typing anki in the terminal gives a bash error that the command isn’t recognized.

Am I missing a step, or could there be an issue with my setup?

2

How exactly did you do it?
If you’ve installed it in /home/user or /usr/local directories then it won’t work because the files there are not inherited by the app qubes:
Templates | Qubes OS

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3

Here’s what I did:

  1. Downloaded anki from the website
  2. installed zstd
  3. Moved to the Downloads folder
  4. Ran this command “tar xaf ~/Downloads/anki” to extract it
  5. Cd’d to extracted anki folder
  6. installed using “sudo ./install.sh”
4

What’s the output of this command?

which anki
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lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 26 Nov 4 00:40 /usr/local/bin/anki → /usr/local/share/anki/anki

6

It’s installing the app in the /usr/local directory so you need to run sudo ./install.sh in the app qube instead of a template.

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7

For debian, the anki website recommends that I also install the following dependencies

sudo apt install libxcb-xinerama0 libxcb-cursor0 libnss3

Would I also need to install these in the app?

And if I run sudo ./install.sh in the app qube, will the installation persist?

And if I need to do installation in the app qube, do I even need parent template vm?

8

You need to install them in the template.

Yes.

If you want to install the anki’s dependencies libxcb-xinerama0 libxcb-cursor0 libnss3 in a separate template then yes.

1 Like
9

Awesome, I got it working!

Thanks apparatus, your help is always greatly appreaciated.
Earnestly,
thanks.

10

Sorry to necro, but as an Anki and Qubes user I had a similar issue as the OP.

The reason why installing Anki on both the appVM and template is the solution, despite the appVM wiping everything but files, is because OP most likely installed the extra dependencies that came in the Anki install download on the appVM’s file directory.

Those dependencies were now in the files and could be referenced by the Anki software on boot.

So to successfully install Anki you need to (As of May 7th, 2026):

  1. Follow the Anki installation guide for your template’s OS, as standard for any other software installation on Qubes.
  2. After following everything in Anki’s documation to a T, shutdown your template and head on over to your appVM that will run Anki

Reference the Anki installation docs once again but note the “Installation” section after “Requirements”

  1. You will want to re-download Anki as prompted with the download link in step 1 and extract the file into the appVM’s file directory as instructed, but just in your AppVM.

These files contain additional dependencies for Anki that will not carry over from the template.
They will persist after the appVM shutdown because again, they’re in the files.
Please refer to the Qubes Documentation on Installing Software for additional information.

Hope that helps, and happy studying!