Visual Studio Code – How to Install Visual Studio Code

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I just downloaded VSCode-linux-x64 from the Microsoft website. It's a 62 MB zip file. How can I install it on my Ubuntu system?

Best Answer

Update

VSCode is now available as DEB file. You can download it and then run:

sudo dpkg -i ~/path/to/code_1.XXX.deb

In case dpkg complains about missing dependencies, run:

sudo apt -f install

afterwards to fix the problem.

Old answer

Download Visual Studio Code for Linux
Extract it: unzip VSCode-linux-x64.zip -d ~/path/to/VSCode
Run the code executable to open Visual Studio Code
(Optional) Create a symbolic link to conveniently run code from the terminal:
sudo ln -s /path/to/VSCode/code /usr/local/bin/code

Source (install instructions): https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/setup/linux

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Error while installing Visual Studio Code on Ubuntu 14.04

cd to the directory where you have downloaded VSCode-linux-x64.zip and run unzip VSCode-linux-x64.zip -d ./vscode to extract the contents of downloaded .zip file to a folder vscode. I did it and it did not give me any error. I could not run it by clicking Code because I am getting -bash: ./Code: cannot execute binary file: Exec format error, mostly because I am using 32-bit linux.

EDIT: Since you said you are getting default value of option force_s3tc_enable overridden by environment error, try installing ttf-mscorefonts-installer by sudo apt-get install ttf-mscorefonts-installer. It might help.

Ubuntu – How To Open Visual Studio Code Using Terminal

It should be called code and for me, I just have to run it.

$ code
$ code my-file

and that works. If installed the .deb (only available in older Ubuntu versions) the path should be

`/usr/bin/code`

If you installed it as a snap, e.g.

$ sudo snap install code --classic

Then it's path should be

`/snap/bin/code`

If you installed it another way, then try to find the binary, e.g.

command -v code

will print the path. command is a bit more reliable than which. VS Code is an Electron application (i.e. Chrome/node) and the launcher is a little wonky. For example, xdg-open does not work well for me.

NOTE ABOUT INSIDERS VERSION: As Nicholas Humphrey points out in the comments, it could also be called code-insiders if you installed the insiders version. This allows you to have side-by-side installations of regular and insider versions.