How To Install Visual Studio Code on Debian 11

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Visual Studio Code on Debian 11. For those of you who didn’t know, Visual Studio Code (VS Code) is a powerful, free, and open-source code editor developed by Microsoft. It is widely used by developers due to its robust features, including syntax highlighting, debugging, integrated Git control, and a vast array of extensions.

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 Visual Studio Code on a Debian 11 (Bullseye).

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Debian 11 (Bullseye).
• 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 Visual Studio Code on Debian 11 Bullseye

Step 1. First, update your system to ensure all packages are up-to-date. Open your terminal and run:

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install curl apt-transport-https

Updating the system helps prevent any potential issues with outdated packages.

Step 2. Installing Required Dependencies.

Install the necessary dependencies for adding repositories and handling HTTPS connections:

sudo apt install software-properties-common apt-transport-https curl

Step 3. Installing Visual Studio Code on Debian 11.

Now we add the GPG key Microsoft Visual Studio Code to your system:

curl -sSL https://packages.microsoft.com/keys/microsoft.asc -o microsoft.asc
gpg --no-default-keyring --keyring ./ms_signing_key_temp.gpg --import ./microsoft.asc
gpg --no-default-keyring --keyring ./ms_signing_key_temp.gpg --export > ./ms_signing_key.gpg
sudo mv ms_signing_key.gpg /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/

Secondly, import the Microsoft Visual Source Repository with the following command below:

echo "deb [arch=amd64] https://packages.microsoft.com/repos/vscode stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/vscode.list

Next, install Visual Studio with the following command:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install code

To verify that Visual Studio Code has been installed successfully, run:

code --version

You should see the version number of Visual Studio Code displayed.

Step 3. Accessing Visual Studio Code.

Once successfully installed, use the following path on your Debian desktop to open with the path: Activities -> Show Applications -> Visual Studio. You can also be launched from the command line by typing code.

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Visual Studio Code. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing the latest version of the Visual Studio Code on Debian 11 Bullseye. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official Visual Studio Code website.