460. Briefly: Crystallography software: CCSD Mercury

The Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC)/Crystal Structure Database (CSD) has a free structure viewer called Mercury. Downloading and installing it is pretty straightforward, but still makes for a reasonable post.

To install
Go to http://www.ccdc.cam.ac.uk/SupportandResources/Downloads/pages/ProtectedDownloadProductList.aspx and click on Mercury. It'll take you to a license agreement page, Click accept to continue. Note that it won't work if you are blocking cookies.

Download Mecury 3.1 for Linux, and the 3.1.1 patch for linux. I'll presume that you downloaded the files to ~/Downloads.

cd ~/Downloads
chmod +x mercurystandalone-3.1-linux-installer.run
./mercurystandalone-3.1-linux-installer.run

Finally, create a file called
~/.local/share/applications/mercury.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Mercury
GenericName=CCDC Mercury
Comment=Visualization of crystal structures
Exec=/home/verahill/.Mercury_3.1/bin/mercury
Icon=/home/verahill/.Mercury_3.1/icons/mercury_48x48.png
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Science
Version=3.1

Update to 3.1.1

cd ~/Downloads
chmod +x csdsystempatch-5.34.2-linux-installer.run
./csdsystempatch-5.34.2-linux-installer.run

And you are done! Note that you will want to have working OpenGL for this to look ok.