How To Install Thinkorswim on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Thinkorswim on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Thinkorswim is an online trading platform developed by TD Ameritrade to allow users to trade in various stocks, options, futures, and equities.

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 Thinkorswim on 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, 16.04, 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 Thinkorswim 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 Java.

Thinkorswim requires OpenJDK 11 to run, now execute the following command to install Java to your system:

sudo apt install openjdk-11-jdk

Then, type below to confirm the Java version:

java --version

Step 3. Installing Thinkorswim on Ubuntu 20.04.

Now we download the Thinkorswim Linux Desktop installer from the official page:

curl https://mediaserver.thinkorswim.com/installer/InstFiles/thinkorswim_installer.sh --output thinkorswim_installer.sh

Then, run the downloaded script using the following command:

sudo sh thinkorswim_installer.sh

The installer should start the application for you. The TOS small box will pop up and say that it is installing updates. After updating it will ask you to enter your account username and password. If you don’t have then go to the official website of this trading platform and register one.

Step 4. Accessing Thinkorswim on Ubuntu.

Once successfully installed, you can launch Thinkorswim editor from your desktop app launcher.

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Thinkorswim. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing the Thinkorswim on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official Thinkorswim website.