How To Install PowerShell on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install PowerShell on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, PowerShell Core is a cross-platform (Windows, Linux, and macOS) automation and configuration tool/framework that works well with your existing tools and is optimized for dealing with structured data (e.g. JSON, CSV, XML, etc.), REST APIs, and object models. It includes a command-line shell, an associated scripting language, and a framework for processing cmdlets.

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 through the step-by-step installation of Microsoft PowerShell on an Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Ubuntu 20.04, 18.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint or elementary OS.
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• 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 PowerShell on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa

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

Step 2. Installing Snap.

Run the following command to install Snap on the Ubuntu system:

sudo apt install snap

Step 3. Installing PowerShell on Ubuntu 20.04.

Install PowerShell using Snap:

sudo snap install PowerShell --classic

Once the installation was successful, you can run the PowerShell, by just issuing this command “pwsh” in the prompt:

$ pwsh

PowerShell 6.2.3
Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
https://aka.ms/pscore6-docs
Type 'help' to get help.

Congratulations! You have successfully installed PowerShell. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing the latest stable version of Microsoft PowerShell on the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS  (Focal Fossa) system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official PowerShell website.