How to install Atom editor in Ubuntu

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Atom is an editor for the 21st century. Created by Github with love, Atom is a modular, advanced, hackable editor for programmers. We all know Editor play’s very important to keep developers like you productive.

To install atom editor in your Ubuntu system, you can visit the official web-site here to download the Atom editor for Mac, Windows and Linux.

how to install atom editor in Ubuntu

Just click on the Download button and open it with the Ubuntu software manager.

if you are a command-line person, you can install Atom by following the steps shown below.

To download and install Atom in Ubuntu you have to type the following command one by one in your terminal.

Step 1 : Add repository from official Atom Site

wget -qO - https://packagecloud.io/AtomEditor/atom/gpgkey | sudo apt-key add -
sudo sh -c 'echo "deb [arch=amd64] https://packagecloud.io/AtomEditor/atom/any/ any main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/atom.list'

Press Enter if it ask your permission.

Step 2 : Update the Ubuntu System

sudo apt-get update

It will take some time. Be patient.

Step 3 : Install Atom Editor

sudo apt-get install atom

It will download and install the Atom editor on your Ubuntu 14.04. Here is a screenshot of Atom running in Ubuntu.

Atom editor in Ubuntu

You can then install extensions to enhance the functionalities of Atom editor. Here are top 5 packages you should consider to install in Atom.

45 thoughts on “How to install Atom editor in Ubuntu”

  2. Chris Komuves

    Needs some more tweaking for the above instructions to work:

    ck@dev7:~$ sudo apt-get install atom
    Reading package lists… Done
    Building dependency tree
    Reading state information… Done
    You might want to run ‘apt-get -f install’ to correct these:
    The following packages have unmet dependencies:
    atom : Depends: gconf2
    Depends: gconf-service
    Depends: libgnome-keyring0 but it is not going to be installed
    Depends: gir1.2-gnomekeyring-1.0 but it is not going to be installed
    Depends: libnotify4 but it is not going to be installed
    Depends: libxtst6 but it is not going to be installed
    Depends: libnss3 but it is not going to be installed
    Depends: gvfs-bin
    Depends: xdg-utils but it is not going to be installed
    E: Unmet dependencies. Try ‘apt-get -f install’ with no packages (or specify a solution).

  7. Thomas Whalen

    I want to thank you for sharing this tutorial. Now I have an editor on my Ubuntu 15 desktop that I really like, and it doesn’t nag me to buy it like Sublime does !

  8. Amir

    I recieve the following error. What should I do??
    dpkg was interrupted, you must manually run ‘sudo dpkg –configure -a’ to correct the problem.

  10. Person

    One liner for code above –

    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/atom -y; sudo apt-get update -y && sudo apt-get install atom -y; sudo apt-get install -f -y

    *Please fix this if I was wrong. I did not responsible for anything happened when you run that code.

  18. Chris

    Hello Sir, I am using an Ubuntu 16.04.1 on a digital ocean droplet and have installed atom but it will not open
    Do you know if it requires some kind of a GUI system? I am only working from the command line.
    Any help is appreciated…

    Running without the SUID sandbox! See https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/master/docs/linux_suid_sandbox_development.md for more information on developing with the sandbox on.
    [4493:0103/141840:ERROR:browser_main_loop.cc(283)] Gtk: cannot open display:

    Thanks

    1. Shahid (UnixRoot) Shaikh

      Hi there,

      You, of course, you need a GUI system to access it.

      You can open atom using the command line but AFAIK, you need GUI system.

  23. Mondal

    MethodError: `bind` has no method matching bind(::Media.Binding{Any}, ::Atom.Editor, ::Task)
    Closest candidates are:
    bind{T}(!Matched::Lazy.Binding{T}, ::T, ::Task)
    bind{T}(!Matched::Function, !Matched::Lazy.Binding{T}, ::T)

    how to solve this issue to be able to run julia file in atom? thanks

  24. Cyber

    thanks Dear i started using ubuntu 1 week ago and can’t find how to download or install ATOM but your aticle done this
    Thanks Bro !

  29. Menashe Koren

    It says “sudo add-apt-repository: command not found”
    I’m using trusty ubuntu 14.04 LTS with Intel i3.
    What should I do?

  30. OG

    I downloaded atom successfully using your instructions. However, when I click on the atom icon to launch it nothing happens. I am on Ubuntu 14.04. Any idea what I can do to fix this?

  33. Martin

    The PPA mentioned in this article is not updated. A better option would be to add `snap install atom –classic` install instructions. Snaps can be installed on Ubuntu (going back to 14.04), Debian, openSUSE, Fedora, Mint, Arch Linux, Solus, etc. The Atom snap is always current and updates automatically when new versions are released 🙂

  34. Shintya

    E: Could not get lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock-frontend – open (11: Resource temporarily unavailable)
    E: Unable to acquire the dpkg frontend lock (/var/lib/dpkg/lock-frontend), is another process using it?
    how to solve this issue? thanks.

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