Bible Software on Ubuntu Linux
July 10th, 2008
As a Christian I am keenly interested in software that can help when studying the Bible. Coming from the Mac OS where there are no good Bible software offerings anything would be a blessing. So, for all you fellow Ubuntu-using Christians here is what I found.
GnomeSword 2 — 4 Stars
GnomeSword 2 is the only Gnome-native app of the bunch (I am running Ubuntu 8.04 with the Gnome desktop.) It is based on Crosswire’s Sword project.
Overall this is a great Bible study application. While it is very simple, lacking many of the features of the more advanced apps (like Sword Searcher and e-Sword discussed below), there are a few things that Gnome Sword excels at. It integrates into the default Ubuntu desktop very well. Navigating to new books and chapters is very easy. The text of each chapter is displayed in a clean font. But what it really excels at is finding and adding new Bible texts (or any text.) It has a very simple method of connecting to Crosswire’s remote server, allowing you to browse all available translations in any language. When you have checked all the texts you want it downloads and installs them in one fell swoop. Here is a screen shot of the Module Manager.
BibleTime 1.6.4 — 3 Stars
Like GnomeSword, BibleTime is based on the sword project. It it very similar to GnomeSword with one very obvious exception—it is written for the K desktop environment.
It has one very fun feature that sets it apart. After searching for a word in the Bible you can press the “analyze” button and see a visualization of that word’s occurrence throughout the books of the Bible. Sweet.
Sword Searcher 5 — 2 Stars
Sword Searcher is not a Linux application, but it can very easily run on Ubuntu Linux via Wine (an application that allows any Window app to run on Linux) I downloaded the demo exe file and it installed perfectly with Wine 0.9.59. Sword Searcher is a nice application, but is costs $50. Given the other three free apps discussed here I did not seriously consider using it so I did not spend much time demoing it. However, for those interested in spending money on good Bible study software it is much more feature rich than the above two.
e-Sword — 5 Stars
e-Sword is undoubtedly my favorite of all. It is a Windows application so it runs via Wine. This means it does not look as pretty as GnomeSword. And the installation is a bit more complicated given the current state of Wine, so you must follow the directions at the Ubuntu forums for getting e-Sword to run on Linux. However, after working through these instructions, which took about 8 minutes, I had e-sword installed, along with the ESV module, running perfectly on Ubuntu Linux 8.04 
Here is the image browser that allows you to look through maps and the like. Nice.
Conclusion
After spending some time with these pieces of software I have kept all three free apps. I have no need to spend $50 when the others can do so much for free so I ditched SwordSearcher 5.
I kept all three because they each have strengths and weaknesses. GnomeSword is just pleasant to use because it is a native Gnome application so it looks very nice. It also opens very fast and is super-easy to navigate. While I love e-Sword it must run in the Wine environment, which currently does not anti-alias fonts, so the text is harder to read when staring at the screen for a long time. And I kept BibleTime because I love that search visualization!
Do you know of any good Bible study software available for Ubuntu Linux? If so please share!
23 Responses to “Bible Software on Ubuntu Linux”
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July 10th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
I’ve used e-Sword for over 5 years and use it instead of the native Linux Bible programs for two main reasons…it has a very capable word processor built-in and the search function seems to be faster.
Besides, I brought it with me after moving completely to Linux!! I have run it successfully with elive, PCLinuxOS, DreamLinux, Kubuntu, OpenSuSE 11 (wow, liking kde4!)
July 11th, 2008 at 9:39 am
Thanks for posting this! I’ve been trying to find some good bible software for linux for a while now. Back when I used windows I would just use e-sword (great program), but for some reason I can’t get it to work well on Ubuntu. :\ I knew about gnomesword… but for some reason I didn’t realize you could install extra modules — so now that I’ve got the ESV translation installed maybe it’ll be a bit more useful to me. Biggest issue now is the lack of strongs numbers…
Solus Christus,
Matt
July 11th, 2008 at 11:04 am
Sweet… I take that back about not being able to get E-Sword running. Looks like ’sudo apt-get remove –purge wine && sudo apt-get install wine’ followed by the instructions you linked to did the trick.
Thanks again!
August 12th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Many thanks for the comparison; I am in a similar boat looking for a good Bible program as I consider switching from Mac to Linux.
However, I find Accordance Bible (Mac) to be such an excellent program that it is one of the things holding me back from switching completely to Linux.
August 15th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
Have you considered Bible Analyzer (www.bibleanalyzer.com)? It is available in a Linux/Ubuntu edition and has several unique features.
August 21st, 2008 at 8:27 pm
Hello Tim,
Thanks for the suggestion regarding Bible Analyzer; I was not aware of it. Once I get a chance to properly use it I will add my thoughts on Bible Analyzer to this article as well.
September 10th, 2008 at 6:59 am
Thanks for your post. Im on my way to installing the GnormSword2 on my Ubuntu machine. Keep up the good work.
September 16th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
First, thanks! This is good info that I will put to use right away! And, just in case someone is unable to get a bible program working under their linux installation, don’t forget blueletterbible.org …
October 23rd, 2008 at 7:01 am
Has anyone tried WINEing
“The Online Bible”, quite old now,
but the versions 6 & 8, do all I want,
and I have invested some 14 years of use in them?
December 13th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
Thanks for your article. I want to second the comment above re Accordance Bible for Mac. This is a great piece of software with a very helpful and supportive company. I’m switching over to Linux but am keeping my old computer for this one program. In the meantime, for less deep study I am learning to deal with GnomeSword.
December 20th, 2008 at 11:08 am
Thanks for writing this! I’m working to get E-sword going on Ubuntu right now; installing the “commentaries” on Ubuntu doesn’t work well due to the need for root access. (Ubuntu has root locked out). http://bernardshuford.wordpress.com/2008/12/20/studying/
March 2nd, 2009 at 9:36 am
Hello,
Is there anything near as eye-candy as Quickverse and still hast NLT and NIV books on it?
Thank you!
May 8th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
[...] is no way copyrighted materials (like good commentaries) will ever be free. Also, I know I could run a good Windows Bible program in Linux, but I’d rather keep everything in one OS to keep things [...]
July 26th, 2009 at 7:16 pm
VirtualBox is also a good alternative to wine.
September 5th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
http://www.theword.gr/
works fine under Wine and loads quick, fonts are nice, search features are up there with the best of them. Only thing I miss are the maps.
October 11th, 2009 at 7:02 am
I second The Word (www.theword.gr). Runs on linux and is much better than all of the above together.
October 27th, 2009 at 6:22 am
Have you tried ‘Akitab’ a java based bible program, it seems very stable and I am pretty sure it runs on a Mac as well. Not in the same class as ‘e-sword’ though.
TC
November 24th, 2009 at 9:13 am
I use Bibleworks V4 with Wine in Ubuntu 9.10. Works very well! Also with Hebrew and Greek fonts.
December 2nd, 2009 at 12:54 pm
I did not know that TheWord would run on ubuntu. is it in synaptic?
December 23rd, 2009 at 8:35 pm
I would love to get this Bible program going but Iam new to Ubuntu and I havent the faintest idea how to do it. ist there not a install zip like windows uses to self install it?
I want to get away from windows, but it has my bible program on it so I dont want to leave it until I have one working on Ubuntu.
Please can you help?
Bill Fleming
January 19th, 2010 at 3:25 pm
Hello,
I upgraded from Ubuntu 9.40 to 9.10. I get no icons on the toolbars when using Bibletime 2.01. Does anyone have a solution? Thanks.
January 24th, 2010 at 10:56 pm
The only thing that has kept me back from going completely to Linux has been access to solid Bible Software. I use Logos4 which is expensive but worth way more than the cost. I also use and love e-sword. I’m thrilled that Sword is coming along well and that e-sword can be used with wine. Until something close to Logos becomes available I’ll have to stay with Windows for my primary studies.
February 8th, 2010 at 3:55 pm
Curtis Harris: Maybe you won’t read this now, but I give it a try. The reason you won’t get the icons are a missing dependency in the bibletime-package. Probably fixed by next version (the package maintainer are notified).
I think it can be fixed by execute the following in a terminal:
sudo apt-get install libqt4-svg libqtgui4