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Awesome Linux IDEs Awesome

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Development environments for Linux distributions, although primarily Ubuntu.

Original list compilation by: Daniel Rosehill

Notes:

đź“ťPackage availability and distro support is subject to ongoing change.

đź“ť Distro badges are generally only added when support for the distro is confirmed or explicitly stated. Support is likely far more extensive, however.

đź“ť This list is non-exhaustive!

Author

Daniel Rosehill
Contact: public@danielrosehill.com

Licensing

All my Github repositories are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International.

Summary of License Terms

You are free to:

  • Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
  • Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.

Under the following terms:

  • Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.

No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

Credits:

Contents

Cross Platform IDEs

Integrated development environments (IDEs) that were either originally cross-platform or developed for other operating systems with Linux support added later.

Visual Studio Code (VS Code)

Available as:

  • deb
  • rpm
  • tar.gz
  • Snap
  • CLI (standalone)

Install notes for various distros are here.

Debian Ubuntu openSUSE Fedora Red Hat

Sublime Code

Linux availability via:

  • apt
  • pacman
  • yum
  • dnf
  • zypper

Debian Ubuntu openSUSE Fedora Red Hat Suse

Phoenix Code

Phoenix Code is the evolution of the Brackets.io project.

It's particularly popular as an IDE for common web languages and markdown formats like HTML, CSS, TypeScript, and JavaScript.

Linux support

Native binaries for Ubuntu/Debian, Fedora, and Arch (among others).

Debian Ubuntu openSUSE Fedora Red Hat

Apache NetBeans

Apache NetBeans is much more than a text editor. It highlights source code syntactically and semantically, lets you easily refactor code, with a range of handy and powerful tools.

Linux support: as snap package.

Elipse IDE

Eclipse is backed by the Eclipse Foundation which grew out of IBM and which is dedicated to providing a global community of users with business friendly IDEs for open source software collaboration and development.

Linux Download Links

Geany

Geany is a versatile and very popular Linux IDE that also runs on Windows and MacOS.

It has built in support for more than 50 programming languages.

The Linux installer is available as .tar.gz.

Open Komodo IDE

Open Komodo IDE is a fast and free multi-language code editor. Written in JS, Python, C++ and based on the Mozilla platform.

Linux installation instructions are here.

Xojo

Drag and drop IDE with a focus on cross-platform support. Develop for Mac, Windows, Linux, web apps, and Raspberry Pi.

Lapce - 'Lighting Fast' IDE

Lapce describes itself as a "lighting fast and powerful code editor."

For Linux, it's available as a .tar.gz for both x86 (64 bit) and ARM (64 bit) computers.

JetBrain IDE Family

JetBrain makes a variety of specialised IDEs for specific tasks and languages.

The easiest way to install the tools is with the JetBrains Toolbox App. The Linux installer is offered as a .tar.gz.

JetBrains have the following installation notes:

"Linux: x86_64: glibc 2.17 (Ubuntu 18.04 or newer) arm64: glibc 2.29 (Ubuntu 20.04 or newer) JetBrains Toolbox App is packaged in AppImage and requires FUSE to run. See AppImage Wiki for details. The following packages must be present: libfuse2 libxi6 libxrender1 libxtst6 mesa-utils libfontconfig libgtk-3-bin tar dbus-user-session"

PyCharm (a JetBrain product) is probably the most popular Python IDE among Linux users.

Lazarus IDE

Lazarus is a Delphi compatible cross-platform IDE for Rapid Application Development. It has variety of components ready for use and a graphical form designer to easily create complex graphical user interfaces.

For Linux there is a .deb and a .rpm installer.

Language And Project Focused IDEs

IDEs that are intended for those writing one or more programming languages and which support one or more Linux distros

KDevelop | C, C++, Python, QML/JavaScript and PHP

Cross-platform IDE for C, C++, Python, QML/JavaScript and PHP

Linux support

Available as a Snap package and for various distros

CodeLite | C, C++, Rust, Python, PHP and JavaScript

Open source and free cross-platform IDE. The JS support is mainly intended for backend development.

Linux support:

  • RPM for Fedora & OpenSUSE
  • Deb for Ubuntu and Debian

Thonny (A Beginners-Friendly Python IDE)

Unusually among IDEs, Thonny was designed specifically to be an easy first tool for learners.

It's a Python IDE with a focus on a clean GUI and a user-friendly debugger.

For Linux, users can:

  • Use the built-in installer
  • Install withpip3

It's also available via

  • Flatpak
  • Snap
  • The repo of Debian and Debian derivatives including Ubuntu (sudo apt install thonny)
  • Fedora (sudo dnf install thonny)

Wing - Python

Wing Python IDE was designed from the ground up for Python, for a more productive development experience.

There's both a free version and an upgraded paid version (Wing Pro).

The IDE is available as an Ubuntu/Debian package, an RPM package, and as a .tar

QTCreator - Embedded Systems IDE

Qt Creator is a cross-platform integrated development environment (IDE) tailored for maximum developer productivity. Qt Creator supports the use of coding assistants like GitHub Copilot during programming. It aids developers in creating software for desktop, mobile, and embedded platforms.

R Studio Desktop (R)

The RStudio integrated development environment (IDE) is a set of tools built to help you be more productive with R and Python.

R must be installed in order for the program to work.

For Linux, there are releases for Ubuntu and Debian (.deb), Open Suse, and Fedora and Red Hat.

Ubuntu Debian Fedora Red Hat

Code::Blocks (C/C++ and Fortran)

Code::Blocks is a free C/C++ and Fortran IDE built to meet the most demanding needs of its users. It is designed to be very extensible and fully configurable.

Linux builds are available via an Ubuntu PPA, .tar.xz for Debian, and .rmps.tar for RedHat and similar systems.

Ubuntu Debian Red Hat

LiteIDE (Go)

LiteIDE is a simple, open source, cross-platform Go IDE.

Mono Develop

Cross platform IDE for C#, F# and more.

For Linux there are downloads for:

  • Ubuntu
  • Debian
  • Raspbian
  • CentOS

Ubuntu Debian Raspberry Pi Cent OS

Kubernetes IDEs And Managers

Lens

Lens is the most popular Kubernetes IDE in the world.

For Linux, it comes available as a:

  • .deb
  • .rpm
  • .snap
  • .appimage

Jet Pilot

JET Pilot is an open-source Kubernetes desktop client that focuses on less clutter, speed and good looks.

For releases, see its Github releases page

Data & Science Focused IDEs

In addition to many of the other IDEs in this list, there are some IDEs intended primarily or exclusively for data-related tasks such as Python-assisted data wrangling, data visualisation, or the creation of documentation in scientific-friendly formats. These include:

Spyder IDE

"Spyder is a free and open source scientific environment written in Python, for Python, and designed by and for scientists, engineers and data analysts."

The Linux download is via Anaconda.

Jupyter IDEs

Project Jupyter releases a number of free and open source products for data analysis that are compatible with Linux systems.

These include JupyterLab, Jupyter Notebook (a data notebook), and Voila.

Arduino IDE

Arduino IDE is (as the name suggests!) an IDE intended for those working on Arduino projects.

The Linux IDE is available as a .zip and as an .appimage

Android Studio

Android Studio is the most popular Android IDE in the world.

Google offers full native Linux support for the product including its components like Gemini in Android Studio (AI code assistance).

Game Development IDEs

Unity

Installation instructions for Unity Hub on Linux are here.

Linux support is currently listed as:

  • CentOS
  • Rocky Linux
  • Ubuntu

Ubuntu Cent OS Rocky Linux

Godot Engine

"Your free, open‑source game engine. Develop your 2D & 3D games, cross-platform projects, or even XR ideas!"

Linux download formats include:

  • x86_64
  • x86
  • .NET - Standard (x86_64)

Defold

"The game engine for high-performance cross-platform games"

The Linux version is available for Ubuntu.

Ubuntu

Open 3D Engine (O3DE)

An open source, real-time 3D engine.

Linux: available for Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.

Ubuntu

GNAT Studio

GNAT Studio is a multi-language IDE with advanced support out-of-the-box for Ada, SPARK, C, C++ and Python.

AI Assisted IDEs

A category that's likely to see a lot of growth in coming years with the growth of interest in everything related to artificial intelligence.

Cursor

Billing itself as the "world's first AI-fist code editor," Cursor integrates AI capabilities throughout its application.

The product has both free and paid tiers which differ according to the LLM used among other feature limitations.

Its Linux product is an .appimage.

(Note: many cloud IDEs like Github Copilot offer AI enhancements).

TabNine (Via VS Code Addon)

TabNine offers AI-generated code suggestions and can be integrated with a number of IDEs with native Linux support, foremost among them VS Code.

Other IDEs

NEOVim

"A hyperextensible Vim-based text editor."

IDE Components And Add-Ons

Code Snippet Managers

Cloud IDEs

(CDEs)

One major advantage of cloud-hosted IDEs for Linux users is that they're OS-agnostic right out of the box.

Popular and growing cloud IDEs include Github Spaces, Browxy, and Code Pen (among many others).

For an excellent list of online/cloud IDEs, see awesome-online-ide.

Updates, Contributions

If you'd like to add an IDE with native Linux support, please either create a pull request or drop me a line.