How to install Visual Studio Code on Ubuntu 20.04

In this article, we are going to learn how to install Visual Studio code also known as (VScode) on Ubuntu 20.04.

Visual Studio Code is a lightweight source code editor which runs on desktops and is available to all operating systems out there. It comes with built-in Javascript, Node.js, and Typescript. One can do programming for almost all languages with ease with Visual Studio Code. The languages supported are, Go, PHP, C++, C#, Java, Python, and also .NET.

Reasons for using VSCode

The reason VS code is such a nice tool is because of the following reasons:

• It is available on all operating systems so it does not limit one on where to run the VS code, you can easily hit the ground running.
• Vscode has a rich build-in developer tooling for example IntelliSense code completion and debugging which become handy when you don not know the complete code snippet. IT acts a guide and also lessen time to code.
• VScode can be customized to suit your needs. You can customize every feature the way you wish and also you can add third party extensions easily.
• VScode is an open source project. So it means you can contribute to the project development, also it means that you have a bigger community where you can ask questions whenever you are faced with problem.
• VScode is built for the web. It includes great tools for web development such React JSx, JSON, SCSS,CSS, HTML and Less.

Related Articles

• How to install Visual Studio Code on Ubuntu 21.04
• How to install Visual Studio Code on ArchLinux
• How to install Visual Studio Code on Ubuntu 21.10

Prerequisites

• Have Ubuntu 20.04 workstation up and running
• Have command line basics
• Have reliable internet access
• Have sudo priliges or you are root user.

Table of Contents

• Update the system
• Install Vscode via snap
• Launch Vscode

Install Visual Studio code

VScode can be installed either from the snap store or downloaded directly from the source.

Install Visual Studio Code via Snap.

Snap packages can be installed directly from either the command line or through the Ubuntu software repository.

Let us first update our system repository with the following command:

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt upgrade -y

After the update and upgrade are complete, we can install VScode classic into our system.

$ sudo snap install --classic code 

Output 
code 899d46d8 from Visual Studio Code (vscode✓) installed

Installing via APT Repository

First, we need to download the packages using the wget command into our system.

$ wget -qO- https://packages.microsoft.com/keys/microsoft.asc | gpg --dearmor > packages.microsoft.gpg

Add trusted GPG key

To validate the repository, we need to install trusted GPG keys into our repository in order to self-sign the certificates. Use the following code to do so.

$ sudo install -o root -g root -m 644 packages.microsoft.gpg /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/

Create VScode directory

We need to create a repository where files can be stored. We will do so at /etc/apt/sources.list directory. Run the following code;

$ sudo sh -c 'echo "deb [arch=amd64,arm64,armhf signed-by=/etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/packages.microsoft.gpg] https://packages.microsoft.com/repos/code stable main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/vscode.list'

As a bonus thing, we can remove Microsoft gpg packages from the downloads page.

$ rm -f packages.microsoft.gpg

Then we need to update our repository cache in order for the changes to take effect.

$ sudo apt update 

# output
Hit:1 http://mirrors.digitalocean.com/ubuntu focal InRelease
Hit:2 https://repos-droplet.digitalocean.com/apt/droplet-agent main InRelease                    
Hit:3 http://mirrors.digitalocean.com/ubuntu focal-updates InRelease                             
Hit:4 http://mirrors.digitalocean.com/ubuntu focal-backports InRelease                                 
Hit:5 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-security InRelease                                       
Get:6 https://packages.microsoft.com/repos/code stable InRelease [10.4 kB]      
Get:7 https://packages.microsoft.com/repos/code stable/main armhf Packages [67.3 kB]
Get:8 https://packages.microsoft.com/repos/code stable/main amd64 Packages [66.7 kB]
Get:9 https://packages.microsoft.com/repos/code stable/main arm64 Packages [67.4 kB]

Install VSCode on Ubuntu 20.04

Lastly, we need t install VSCode with the following command;

$ sudo apt install code

Sample output will look like this;

The following additional packages will be installed:
  adwaita-icon-theme at-spi2-core fontconfig fontconfig-config fonts-dejavu-core gtk-update-icon-cache hicolor-icon-theme
  humanity-icon-theme libatk-bridge2.0-0 libatk1.0-0 libatk1.0-data libatspi2.0-0 libavahi-client3 libavahi-common-data
  libavahi-common3 libcairo-gobject2 libcairo2 libcolord2 libcups2 libdatrie1 libepoxy0 libfontconfig1 libgbm1
  libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 libgdk-pixbuf2.0-bin libgdk-pixbuf2.0-common libgraphite2-3 libgtk-3-0 libgtk-3-bin libgtk-3-common
  libharfbuzz0b libjbig0 libjpeg-turbo8 libjpeg8 liblcms2-2 libpango-1.0-0 libpangocairo-1.0-0 libpangoft2-1.0-0
  libpixman-1-0 librest-0.7-0 librsvg2-2 librsvg2-common libsecret-1-0 libsecret-common libsoup-gnome2.4-1 libthai-data
  libthai0 libtiff5 libwayland-client0 libwayland-cursor0 libwayland-egl1 libwayland-server0 libwebp6 libxcb-render0
  libxcb-shm0 libxcomposite1 libxcursor1 libxdamage1 libxfixes3 libxi6 libxinerama1 libxkbcommon0 libxkbfile1 libxrandr2
  libxrender1 libxss1 libxtst6 ubuntu-mono x11-common
Suggested packages:
  colord cups-common gvfs liblcms2-utils librsvg2-bin
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  adwaita-icon-theme at-spi2-core code fontconfig fontconfig-config fonts-dejavu-core gtk-update-icon-cache
  hicolor-icon-theme humanity-icon-theme libatk-bridge2.0-0 libatk1.0-0 libatk1.0-data libatspi2.0-0 libavahi-client3
  libavahi-common-data libavahi-common3 libcairo-gobject2 libcairo2 libcolord2 libcups2 libdatrie1 libepoxy0 libfontconfig1
  libgbm1 libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 libgdk-pixbuf2.0-bin libgdk-pixbuf2.0-common libgraphite2-3 libgtk-3-0 libgtk-3-bin
  libgtk-3-common libharfbuzz0b libjbig0 libjpeg-turbo8 libjpeg8 liblcms2-2 libpango-1.0-0 libpangocairo-1.0-0
  libpangoft2-1.0-0 libpixman-1-0 librest-0.7-0 librsvg2-2 librsvg2-common libsecret-1-0 libsecret-common libsoup-gnome2.4-1
  libthai-data libthai0 libtiff5 libwayland-client0 libwayland-cursor0 libwayland-egl1 libwayland-server0 libwebp6
  libxcb-render0 libxcb-shm0 libxcomposite1 libxcursor1 libxdamage1 libxfixes3 libxi6 libxinerama1 libxkbcommon0 libxkbfile1
  libxrandr2 libxrender1 libxss1 libxtst6 ubuntu-mono x11-common
0 upgraded, 70 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 96.5 MB of archives.
After this operation, 411 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] 

Press Y to allow installation to continue.

We can start Visual Studio Code with the following command:

$ code 

Conclusion

We have installed Visual Studio Code in our Ubuntu 20.04 workstation. Go ahead and configure to suit your programming needs. Consult Visual studio code documentation if you face any problems. I hope you have enjoyed and learn something new.