How To Install Lua Scripting Language on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Lua Scripting Language on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Lua is a lightweight, high-level, multi-paradigm programming language designed primarily for embedded use in applications. It’s an extensible and interpreted scripting language that is dynamically typed, and run by interpreting bytecode with a register-based virtual machine.

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 the Lua programming language on Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 22.04 and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint, Elementary OS, Pop!_OS, and more as well.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Ubuntu 22.04, 20.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.
• 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).
• A non-root sudo user or access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Install Lua Scripting Language on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish

Step 1. First, make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running the following apt commands in the terminal.

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install wget apt-transport-https gnupg2

Step 2. Installing Lua Scripting Language on Ubuntu 22.04.

• Install Lua programming language using Ubuntu Base Repository.

By default, Lua is available on Ubuntu 22.04 base repository. Now run the following command below to install the latest stable version of Lua to your Ubuntu system:

sudo apt install lua5.3

• Install Lua programming language from the official source.

Now run the following below to download the Lua source file from the official page:

mkdir lua_build
cd lua_build
curl -R -O http://www.lua.org/ftp/lua-5.4.4.tar.gz

Next, extract the downloaded file:

tar zxf lua-5.4.4.tar.gz
cd lua-5.4.4

Finally, compile the source code using the following command:

make linux test
sudo make install

Once successfully installed, run Lua interpreter as shown:

lua

Step 3. Create Sample Lua Program.

Now we create a sample program:

hello.lua

Add the following file:

print("Hello World")
print("This is idroot.com and we are testing Lua program")

Save and close the file, then run your program:

lua hello.lua

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Lua. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing the Lua programming language on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official Lua website.