Failed to download pyqt6-webengine-qt6==6.8.2

Anki Help
1

I am trying to install Anki on Ubuntu 24.04.03 LTS. I followed the instructions on the official anki website.

After following the instructions and running `anki`, and trying to follow the launcher instructions, I get the following issue:

username@desktopname:~/Downloads/anki-launcher-25.07.5-linux$ anki

Anki Launcher

1) Latest Anki (press Enter)
2) Choose a version

5) Allow betas: off
6) Cache downloads: on

7) Uninstall
> 1

Checking for updates...
Updating Anki...

Resolved 49 packages in 220ms
  × Failed to download `pyqt6==6.9.1`
  ├─▶ Failed to write to the distribution cache
  ├─▶ error decoding response body
  ├─▶ request or response body error
  ├─▶ error reading a body from connection
  ╰─▶ connection reset
  help: `pyqt6` (v6.9.1) was included because `anki-launcher` (v1.0.0) depends
        on `aqt` (v25.7.5) which depends on `pyqt6`
Install failed: Failed to run (1): /usr/local/share/anki/uv.amd64 sync --upgrade --managed-python --no-config --python 3.13.5

Error: Failed to run (1): /usr/local/share/anki/uv.amd64 sync --upgrade --managed-python --no-config --python 3.13.5
Press enter to close...

Does anyone have any advice on what to do from here? This is a pretty fresh install of a recent LTS release of Ubuntu, so I am surprised to see this issue.

2

Have you reviewed any of the other recent threads related to the launcher to see if the suggestions there will help you?

3

Yes. I have tried to search for keywords related to my issue, and found no similar problems. I have also browsed the past 20 days of anki-help posts, but found nothing similar to the issue I am reporting.

4

I managed to download the tarball for anki 24.11, do sudo ./install.sh, and install anki that way.

But, if I try to install anki 24.11 using the launcher that runs after doing sudo ./install.sh after decompressing the tarball from anki 25.07.05 and then running anki, I get the same error as before.

So it seems that the issue has to do with the new anki launcher workflow.

Perhaps it is because of the way python packages are managed in recent releases of Ubuntu. You can no longer install a python package system-wide using pip. They instead encourage doing everything in virtual environments, or else using apt install python3-packagename. Perhaps the launcher is trying to download pyqt6 using pip, or otherwise trying to download it in some way that is incompatible with recent Ubuntu releases?

Has anybody managed to install Anki through the anki launcher on Ubuntu 24? I tried it on my laptop as well as my desktop, and ran into the same issue each time.

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5

Your error message posted earlier says that the connection didn’t work. Do you have unrestricted internet in your location? If no, did you try using the mirror option in the launcher? The launcher uses uv (similar to pip) to download required dependencies for Anki to run. (The earlier Anki versions were able to include these in the download, but because of certain reasons this has become unviable.)

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