How to Install Atom Text Editor in Linux

 | Updated March 16, 2021 | Categories Tutorials

Linux has some popular text editor and the one on the list is atom. Atom is an advanced open source text and source code editor built on Electron and developed by GitHub.

Atom is a multi-platform editing tool that works on OS X, Windows, or Linux. This would be the best tool for programmers as it supports smart autocompletion, file system browser and split Atom interface into multiple panes. Find/replace files or all projects is another nice feature of this tool.

In this article, I will show you how to install atom on Ubuntu 18.04, Centos 7 and Arch Linux.

1) Download Atom

Atom can be downloaded as packages or from source. Actually, the latest stable version is the 1.27.0 and the beta version is the 1.28.0 You can look for the version which is suitable for you directly to the GitHub site

On Ubuntu 18.04, you can download as below:

#  wget https://github.com/atom/atom/releases/download/v1.27.0/atom-amd64.deb
--2018-05-16 02:05:48-- https://github.com/atom/atom/releases/download/v1.27.0/atom-amd64.deb
Resolving github.com (github.com)... 192.30.253.112, 192.30.253.113
Connecting to github.com (github.com)|192.30.253.112|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 302 Found

On centos 7 as below

# wget https://github.com/atom/atom/releases/download/v1.27.0/atom.x86_64.rpm
--2018-05-16 02:09:07-- https://github.com/atom/atom/releases/download/v1.27.0/atom.x86_64.rpm
Resolving github.com (github.com)... 192.30.253.113, 192.30.253.112
Connecting to github.com (github.com)|192.30.253.113|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 302 Found

2) Install atom

Now that we have downloaded atom, we can install it

a) On Arch Linux 2018

On Arch Linux 2018, atom can be download directly via the pacman command

# pacman -Sy atom
:: Synchronizing package databases...
 archlinuxfr is up to date
 core is up to date
 extra is up to date
 community is up to date
resolving dependencies...
....
....
:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n] y

b) On Ubuntu 18.04

Install from deb package

Go to the folder where you downloaded the deb package, then use the dpkg command

# dpkg -i atom-amd64.deb 
(Reading database ... 134620 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack atom-amd64.deb ...
Unpacking atom (1.27.0) over (1.27.0) ...
Setting up atom (1.27.0) ...
Processing triggers for gnome-menus (3.13.3-11ubuntu1) ...
Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils (0.23-1ubuntu3) ...
Processing triggers for mime-support (3.60ubuntu1) ...

Install from snap

You can also install atom via snap on your Ubuntu 18.04. First, you need to install the snapd package

# apt install snapd
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree 
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
 gconf-service gconf-service-backend gconf2 gconf2-common libgconf-2-4
 libpython-stdlib python python-minimal python2.7 python2.7-minimal

Now you can install atom via snap. You should notice that on snap the available version of atom when writing this article is the 1.26.1

# snap install --classic atom
Download snap "atom" (150) from channel "stable"     88%  175kB/s 1m41s
atom 1.26.1 from 'snapcrafters' installed

c) On Centos 7

On Centos 7 atom needs some dependencies to be installed so, we will need to use the yum command to install the .rpm package downloaded earlier

# yum install atom.x86_64.rpm 
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror
Examining atom.x86_64.rpm: atom-1.27.0-0.1.x86_64
Marking atom.x86_64.rpm to be installed
Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
---> Package atom.x86_64 0:1.27.0-0.1 will be installed
--> Processing Dependency: lsb-core-noarch for package: atom-1.27.0-0.1.x86_64
...
...
Total size: 506 M
Total download size: 3.1 M
Installed size: 511 M
Is this ok [y/d/N]: y

3) Launch atom

Now that atom is installed, you can launch it

Now you can choose atom and start to use it

Now we have installed atom, you can try each feature offered by this tool.

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