Add the ppa:js-reynaud/ppa-kicad to your list of sources:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:js-reynaud/ppa-kicad
Then update package repository info
sudo apt-get update
Then install kicad
sudo apt-get install kicad kicad-common
Done. As of 2014-10-19 I get "Build 2014-jul-16 BZR unknown" - which should be new enough to contain most of the features I want.
There is a problem with this install because the environment variable KIGITHUB is not set. We do that by adding this line to ~/.profile
export KIGITHUB="https://github.com/KiCad"
For this to take effect you need to log out and then log in again. You should now see KIGITHUB defined in the under Preferences/Library Tables in Pcbnew. I still have KISYSMOD undefined, but that doesn't seem to matter(?).
So far so good. Next stop is learning how to work with the kicad github plugin so I can store my own symbols/footprints in my own github repo.