In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Atom Text Editor on your Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Atom is a free and open-source text and source code editor for macOS, Linux, and Microsoft Windows with support for plug-ins written in Node.js, and embedded Git Control, developed by GitHub. Atom is a desktop application built using web technologies. Most of the extended packages have free software licenses and are community-built and maintained. Atom is based on Electron (formerly known as Atom Shell), a framework that enables cross-platform desktop applications using Chromium and Node.js. It is written in CoffeeScript and Less. It can also be used as an integrated development environment (IDE).
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of Atom Text Editor on the Ubuntu 16.04 Xenial Xerus server.
Prerequisites
- A server running one of the following operating systems: Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus)
- It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
- SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
- An active internet connection.
- A
non-root sudo useror access to theroot user. We recommend acting as anon-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.
Install Atom Text Editor on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
Step 1. First, make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running the following apt-get commands in the terminal.
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade
Step 2. Installing Atom Text Editor.
First, download its Debian (64-bit) package from its official site. Open the terminal and use the following wget command:
wget https://github.com/atom/atom/releases/download/v1.18.0/atom-amd64.deb
Install the downloaded Debian package along with its required dependencies:
dpkg -i atom-amd64.deb apt-get install -f
Once installed, next you can start Atom by searching for it in Unity Dash. If the app icon doesn’t show up, try logging out and logging back in.
Congratulations! You have successfully installed Atom. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing Atom Text Editor in Ubuntu 16.04 Xenial Xerus systems. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official Atom Text Editor website.
