How to QGIS 4.2 on Linux Mint (Sept ’26)

For a while now, my preferred way of installing QGIS has been from conda-forge. However, while we’re waiting for QGIS 4 to become available on conda-forge, there are alternatives:

Meet the official QGIS Docker Images

First off, you’ll need Docker. If you haven’t installed it yet, it’s directly available from the Linux Mint Software Manager:

From there on, we just switch to the Terminal for the rest.

If you get “permission denied while trying to connect to the docker API” when running any of the following commands, you may have to add your user account to the docker group:

			
sudo usermod -aG docker $USER
newgrp docker # or just log out and back in

Afterwards, it should be straightforward to get the image from Docker Hub, e.g.:

docker pull qgis/qgis:4.2.2-questing

And once it’s downloaded, we can launch QGIS:

			
xhost +local:docker
docker run --rm -it --name qgis
-v /tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix
-e DISPLAY=$DISPLAY
qgis/qgis:4.2.2-questing qgis

		

Voilá, QGIS 4!

To persist your QGIS profile/settings across container runs, mount a local folder to the config path, e.g.:

			
docker run --rm -it --name qgis
-v /tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix
-e DISPLAY=$DISPLAY
-v ~/.qgis-docker-profile:/root/.local/share/QGIS
qgis/qgis:4.2.2-questing qgis

		

Of course, last but not least, we’ll also need access to our data, so let’s mount a data directory as well, e.g.:

			
docker run --rm -it --name qgis
-v /tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix
-e DISPLAY=$DISPLAY
-v ~/.qgis-docker-profile:/root/.local/share/QGIS
-v /media/anita/SSD1/Geodata:/data
qgis/qgis:4.2.2-questing qgis

		

Fancy a bit of a stress test? I happened to find a project file written by QGIS 2.19 🫢

Yes, my friend, this project file is indeed a litte bit older … but hey, that doesn’t look too bad at all! Some icons seem to be off but, otherwise, looks like winter is coming.