Virtual flashcards with Anki
Learn It!
Flashcards are a fast and effective way to memorize pertinent facts for your next exam. Anki takes this time-honored trick in a direction you never could have imagined in the days of those classic 3x5 cards.
Anki is a multiplatform, open source digital version of paper flashcards that "makes remembering things easy" [1] and "makes memory a choice" [2]. You can run Anki on Linux, macOS, and Windows systems, as well as on mobile devices [3].
Flashcards are a quick and easy way to memorize facts for academic tests and other training scenarios. The two main reasons to try Anki are the sheer number of cards it can handle (more than 100,000, according to its developers), and how easy it is to embed all kinds of content in each card, from audio and video to scientific formulas and musical scores. Anki also has many add-ons and a web interface [4] that you can use to study your cards online or keep them synchronized across multiple devices. Personally, I also really like that Anki saves and exports data in well-supported formats that make it easy to automatically create or analyze as many flashcards as I want in many different ways.
Installation and Upgrades
At the time of writing, there are two branches of Anki for Linux, one built with version 5 and one with version 6 of the same Qt graphic libraries that are the foundation of the KDE Desktop Environment. Both branches also depend on three external libraries – called libxcb-xinerama0, libxcb-cursor0, and libnss3 – that you should be able to install from the standard repositories of most Linux distributions.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.

News
-
EndeavorOS Mercury Neo Available
A new release from the EndeavorOS team ships with Plasma 6.3 and other goodies.
-
Fedora 42 Beta Has Arrived
The Fedora Project has announced the availability of the first beta release for version 42 of the open-source distribution.
-
Dash to Panel Maintainer Quits
Charles Gagnon has stepped away as maintainer of the popular Dash to Panel Gnome extension.
-
CIQ Releases Security-Hardened Version of Rocky Linux
If you're looking for an enterprise-grade Linux distribution that is hardened for business use, there's a new version of Rocky Linux that's sure to make you and your company happy.
-
Gnome’s Dash to Panel Extension Gets a Massive Update
If you're a fan of the Gnome Dash to Panel extension, you'll be thrilled to hear that a new version has been released with a dock mode.
-
Blender App Makes it to the Big Screen
The animated film "Flow" won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature at the 97th Academy Awards held on March 2, 2025 and Blender was a part of it.
-
Linux Mint Retools the Cinnamon App Launcher
The developers of Linux Mint are working on an improved Cinnamon App Launcher with a better, more accessible UI.
-
New Linux Tool for Security Issues
Seal Security is launching a new solution to automate fixing Linux vulnerabilities.
-
Ubuntu 25.04 Coming Soon
Ubuntu 25.04 (Plucky Puffin) has been given an April release date with many notable updates.
-
Gnome Developers Consider Dropping RPM Support
In a move that might shock a lot of users, the Gnome development team has proposed the idea of going straight up Flatpak.