How To Install Visual Studio Code on Linux Mint 21

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Visual Studio Code on Linux Mint 21. For those of you who didn’t know, Visual Studio Code (VS Code) has become one of the most popular code editors among developers worldwide, thanks to its powerful features, extensive extensions library, and cross-platform compatibility. As a developer, having a reliable and efficient code editor is crucial for productivity and success.

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 a Visual Studio Code on Linux Mint 21.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Linux Mint 21.
• 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 network connection or internet access.
• 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 Linux Mint 21 Vanessa

Step 1. Before running the tutorial below, it’s important to make sure your system is up to date by running the following apt commands in the terminal:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install software-properties-common apt-transport-https wget ca-certificates gnupg2

Step 2. Installing Visual Studio Code on Linux Mint 21.

By default, VS Code is not available on the Linux Mint 21 base repository. Now we add the Visual Studio Code repository to your system using the following command:

echo deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/vscode.gpg] https://packages.microsoft.com/repos/vscode stable main | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/vscode.list

Next, import the GPG key:

sudo wget -O- https://packages.microsoft.com/keys/microsoft.asc | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/vscode.gpg

Now start by updating the packages list and install Visual Studio Code stable by using the command below:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install code

Output:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  python3-cliapp python3-ttystatus
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove them.
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  code
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 85.8 MB of archives.
After this operation, 368 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 https://packages.microsoft.com/repos/vscode stable/main amd64 code amd64 1.69.2-1658162013 [85.8 MB]
Ign:1 https://packages.microsoft.com/repos/vscode stable/main amd64 code amd64 1.69.2-1658162013
Get:1 https://packages.microsoft.com/repos/vscode stable/main amd64 code amd64 1.69.2-1658162013 [85.8 MB]
Fetched 48.0 MB in 18min 12s (49.4 kB/s)                                           
Selecting previously unselected package code.
(Reading database ... 363939 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../code_1.69.2-1658162013_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking code (1.69.2-1658162018) ...
Setting up code (1.69.2-1658162018) ...
Processing triggers for gnome-menus (3.36.0-1ubuntu3) ...
Processing triggers for shared-mime-info (2.1-2) ...
Processing triggers for mailcap (3.70+nmu1ubuntu1) ...
Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils (0.26+mint1+vanessa) ...

Step 3. Accessing Visual Studio Code on Linux Mint 21.

Once we finish with the installation, we will find Visual Studio Code in the Mint menu, in the Programming section or you can launch it through the terminal with the help of the command shown below:

code

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