Comment 29 for bug 228067

As others have said, the best solution for those stuck with LyX not working is to build LyX locally. I suggest doing this *without* installing your built LyX, just by building it, meanwhile keeping your Ubuntu LyX installation intact. This will have no effect at all on your Ubuntu installation and is 100% safe! Eventually, I'm sure the qt4 problem will be solved in the repository and you'll be able to go back to your Ubuntu LyX without any problems. Then, you can simply delete the directory with the temporary LyX.

Here's how to do it, step by step. Easy, I promise! Works on 32- and 64-bit systems.

1. Make sure you have the build tools you need. For my system, this was good enough:

sudo aptitude install build-essential libqt4-dev libx11-dev

2. Download the source from here:

http://linux.softpedia.com/progDownload/LyX-Download-2149.html

Just double-click and drag out the directory inside. Put it anywhere you want! I'm messy, so I just left it on my desktop.

3. Open a terminal, and change to that directory. Type:

./configure

This should take a few minutes, and hopefully will end in success. If not, it should tell you which development libraries you are missing. With some searching in Synaptic, you should be able to find them. The package names are always something like lib...-dev.

4. Now, type this:

make

It took about 20 minutes on my system. When it's done, you can run your fresh build of LyX by clicking on lyx inside the src subdirectory. You can also simply drag this icon to your GNOME panel (or KDE equivalent) to automatically create a launcher.

When the Ubuntu LyX is finally working again, you can simply throw this directory to the trash. Or... you might want to keep it, just to have access to the latest and greatest LyX features. There's no harm at all in having both installs.