Symptom:
When Opening the the Canopy Editor window on Linux, the IPython prompt show's a warning similar to:
Kernel running in the 'User' environment.
[CANOPY] WARNING:
Could not start Pylab.
Cause:
This error may be caused by an incompatibility between the version of the libfreetype library provided by Canopy and that provided by the User's linux distribution. This error is most likely to be encountered on rolling-release linux distributions that seek to provide the most recent versions of common libraries such as libfreetype. For example, this error has been reported on Manjaro Linux, where as of Manjaro 17.10, the system libfreetype library is version 6.16.1, whereas Canopy ships with libfreetype 6.11.2. This error may also be encountered on similar 'cutting-edge' linux variants such as Fedora or OpenSUSE Tumbleweed.
Solution:
The workaround for this problem is to use the system's libfreetype library rather than the version shipped with Canopy. This can be achieved in two ways:
1. Simply rename the libfreetype files provided by Canopy to have the extension .back:
for fl in ~/.local/share/canopy/edm/envs/User/lib/libfreetype.*; do mv $fl $fl.back; done
OR
2. Edit the symbolic link: libfreetype.so provided by Canopy to point to your system's libfreetype.so.6.x.y file
e.g.
mv ~/.local/share/canopy/edm/envs/User/lib/libfreetype.so ~/.local/share/canopy/edm/envs/User/lib/libfreetype.so.back
ln -s /path/to/system/libfreetype.so.6.x.y ~/.local/share/canopy/edm/envs/User/lib/libfreetype.so
To find the system version of libfreetype, you'll need to search some common directories such as /lib, /lib64, /usr/lib, etc ....
NOTE: Whichever workaround is chosen, this should only be done when your system libfreetype is using the same major version - i.e. version 6; do not perform this procedure if your system is using a legacy version of libfreetype i.e. libfreetype.so.5.x.y
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