Visual Studio Code is a source code editor by Microsoft. It is an open-source, free, lightweight, and powerful editor and is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. Don’t confuse it with Visual Studio IDE. It is a lot different, proprietary tool by Microsoft.
It comes with built-in support for TypeScript, Node.js, and JavaScript. There are a good number of extensions available for other languages (such as C++, C#, Java, Python, PHP, and Go) and runtimes (such as .NET and Unity) with powerful developer tools, like IntelliSense code completion and debugging.
Features,
- IntelliSense
- debugging
- Git commands built-in
- Extensible and customizable.
- Available for macOS, Linux, and Windows
- Robust and extensible architecture
You can refer to the official page and why VS code to know more about the features.
Visual Studio Code is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems. You can install it on Linux using. Deb or.RPM package or using the official snap package. We are going to cover all these methods. You should use only one method.
Install Visual Studio Code .Deb package on Ubuntu
Open Firefox, Chrome, or any of the browsers and download VS code from the Official page. It is available for both .deb and .rpm packages for Debian/Ubuntu and Redhat/Fedora/Suse Linux Distros respectively.
Click to download the .deb package.
Choose the Save file option and click OK.
Once the download is finished, go to the download folder, select the file, right click and choose the Open With Software Install option.
Click Install Button. Enter sudo user password to complete the installation.
Next, go to activities and search for Visual Studio code. Select to launch it.
Configure Theme and other options. This is how it looks.
Whenever you want to remove VS code, simply, go to Ubuntu Software. Search for the code and click on remove.
Install Visual Studio Code Snap Package on Ubuntu
VS Code is available as a snap package. Snap packages simplify installing and updating the software on the Linux Operating System. There are 2 snap packages available. One is VS CODE maintained by snapcrafter and the other is official CODE by Microsoft. We are going to use the official snap package for demonstration.
Open Ubuntu Terminal and search for code using the snap find command.
$ snap find code code-insiders b7c5e104 vscode* classic Code editing. Redefined. codeverse-portal 0.3.0 craigulliott - Codeverse Display App codeverse-device-status 0.0.3 craigulliott - System health statistics and heartbeat system code 51b0b281 vscode* classic Code editing. Redefined. qr-cod
This command list down all the matching packages.
code-insiders – It is daily built for Developers. Not stable may crash.
code – Stable one.
Next, install code snap package.
$ sudo snap install code --classic
Simply, type the code on the terminal to launch it.
$ code
This is how the editor looks.
Use the command snap refresh to update the editor if there is a newer version available.
$ sudo snap refresh code snap "code" has no updates available
Run the snap remove command to remove the visual studio code editor.
$ sudo snap remove code
Summary
Visual Studio is one of the best source code editors for Linux. Go ahead and install it and enjoy coding.
There are other text editors also available for Linux if you want to try them.
