Phoebetria BitFenix Recon Fan Control

How do you install the ancient Phoebetria software that controls the BitFenix Recon fan controller under a current Ubuntu? This fan controller is still pretty unrivaled even today. Unfortunately, the manufacturer has not been interested in its product since shortly after its launch.

On Sourceforge the software Phoebetria is also available in .deb format for Ubuntu. On Windows and macOS the software is quite easy to install, only on Ubuntu you could constantly bang your head on the tabletop. Over and over again.

We download the above mentioned file. But it won’t install like that. Let’s not even try.

So how do I get the fan controller to work?
Quite simple, old, unfulfilled dependencies have to be fulfilled.
Qt4 and libusb-1.0 we need for example. Add the repo for it:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:rock-core/qt4
sudo apt-get update

Let’s install this old rubbish:

sudo apt install qt4-dev-tools libqt4-dev libqt4-core libqt4-gui
sudo apt install libcanberra-gtk-module libcanberra-gtk3-module 
sudo apt-get install libusb-1.0
sudo apt-get install libusb-dev 
cd /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/ 
sudo ln -sf libudev.so.1 libudev.so.0

Change to the Downloads-Folder:

cd ~/Downloads

Now install Phoebetria and add your User to the Group of fancontrollers:

sudo apt-get install -f ./phoebetria-debian-amd64-1.4.0-1.deb
sudo usermod -a -G fancontrollers USERNAME
reboot

That’s all!

BTW: Path to the Phoebetria Profiles Folder:

~/.config/Phoebetria/