Opening File Geodatabase in QGIS for Ubuntu?

I know it's been a while since this question was asked, but I was having similar problems (albeit with 14.04) and thought I'd post my solution.

I also had QGIS 1.8 installed (and later again tried this with 2.18 to no avail), and the solution given by jbalk did not work because this option didn't exist in the drop-down list. While the OpenGDB driver is installed in QGIS by default, it is only the case when it is compiled against GDAL version 1.11.0 or higher (see RyanDalton's comment on File Geodatabase (*.gdb) support in QGIS?). When installing the stable version of QGIS version according to the QGIS website instructions, I ended up with a GDAL version of 0.9.#.

You can check your GDAL version by typing

gdalinfo --version

The easiest way to fix this now (perhaps this update didn't exist back in 2013) is to install using the ubuntugis-based repositories according to the instructions on the QGIS website. The GDAL version will then be up-to-date (mine currently reads 2.1.0), the OpenGDB driver will work out of the box, and you can follow jbalk's instructions.