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Mir Rahed Uddin
Mir Rahed Uddin

Posted on • Edited on

GitHub Desktop Linux Is GitHub Desktop available for GNU/Linux?

Currently, Github Desktop for GNU/Linux is not officially supported by the GitHub, but there is a fork that hosts a version for Debian/Ubuntu & Red Hat/CentOS/Fedora distributions.

How to get it on your desktop?



1) Go to this link https://github.com/shiftkey/desktop/releases and look for the latest release (whatever present at the top)

2) Scroll down to the Assets section, click it to expand and see the downloadables.

Github Desktop Assets

3) Download the .deb, .rpm or .AppImage depending on the distribution you're running.

.deb -> Dabian based distros (Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Pop OS etc)
.rpm -> Red Hat Linux (Fedora, CentOS, OpenSUSE, OpenMandriva etc)
.appImage -> Portable Version of the application (Supports all major distributions)

4) Execute the installer & install the Github Desktop in your system

Install the Github Desktop from the command line

(Note : Sometimes command-line installation and updating process won't work due to the hosting server problem of Github Desktop. To know more you can check this post or this issue thread. In this case, avoid command-line installation and download the executable from Github releases as mentioned above)

Debian/Ubuntu distributions

To set up the package repository, run these commands:

wget -qO - https://packagecloud.io/shiftkey/desktop/gpgkey | sudo apt-key add -



sudo sh -c 'echo "deb [arch=amd64] https://packagecloud.io/shiftkey/desktop/any/ any main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/packagecloud-shiftky-desktop.list'



sudo apt-get update

Then install GitHub Desktop:

sudo apt install github-desktop

Red Hat/CentOS/Fedora distributions

To setup the package repository, run these commands:

sudo rpm --import https://packagecloud.io/shiftkey/desktop/gpgkey



sudo sh -c 'echo -e "[shiftkey]\nname=GitHub Desktop\nbaseurl=https://packagecloud.io/shiftkey/desktop/el/7/\$basearch\nenabled=1\ngpgcheck=0\nrepo_gpgcheck=1\ngpgkey=https://packagecloud.io/shiftkey/desktop/gpgkey" > /etc/yum.repos.d/shiftkey-desktop.repo'

Then install GitHub Desktop:

*if yum is your package manager

sudo yum install github-desktop

*if dnf is your package manager

sudo dnf install github-desktop

Screenshots [ Github Desktop running on Linux Mint ]

Github Desktop

Github Desktop create repository

Github Desktop clone repository


References https://github.com/shiftkey/desktop

Watch on YouTube

Thanks for reading :)

Coffee https://www.buymeacoffee.com/rahedmir

Top comments (16)

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shawnpm profile image
Shawn

On my other device these commands didn't work for some reason (said PGP data not found or something). So if anyone else is having this problem:

  1. Go to github.com/shiftkey/desktop/releases

  2. Scroll down to "Assets" and click it to expand and see the
    downloadables.

  3. Download the .deb, .rpm, .snap or .AppImage depending on which
    distribution you're running.

  4. run the command

sudo apt install ~/Downloads/whicheverfileYouJustDownloaded

Enjoy your GH Desktop on Linux!

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fsou1 profile image
Maxim Zhukov

Made my day, thx

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bhayes profile image
b-hayes

Thanks for this!
Can confirm it works on WSLv2 Ubuntu 20 in windows, however...
It has poor performance, commits are slow and it doesn't refresh the files unless you hover your mouse over the window. It also doesn't run your git hooks, and it also doesn't show the pass/fail status of your checks on Github.

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rahedmir profile image
Mir Rahed Uddin

Version 2.6.6 Linux RC1 released a few hours ago, check if those problems still persist or not in the newest version

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bhayes profile image
b-hayes

how do I update it?

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rahedmir profile image
Mir Rahed Uddin
Thread Thread
 
bhayes profile image
b-hayes • Edited

couldn't muster the effort to figure out how to install the updated version yet.

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joca1268 profile image
joca1268

Hi,
I'm a problem:
sudo rpm --import packagecloud.io/shiftkey/desktop/g...
curl: (22) The requested URL returned error: 429
erreur : packagecloud.io/shiftkey/desktop/g... l'importation de lecture a échoué (2).

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rahedmir profile image
Mir Rahed Uddin

Joca, I am not too familiar with Fedora, OpenSUSE, or .rpm based Linux distros, So I am not sure why this occurs but you can try Github Desktop's .rpm executable, instead of going through the command line.

Direct download link github.com/shiftkey/desktop/releas...

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daveparr profile image
Dave Parr

Absolute banger, thanks for the tip, trialling now on POP_OS!

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ranjansamar profile image
samar ranjan nayak

Getting below error while installing the .rpm package.
[samar@samar Downloads]$ sudo rpm -i GitHubDesktop-linux-2.9.4-linux1.rpm
[sudo] password for samar:
error: Failed dependencies:
(kde-cli-tools or kde-cli-tools5 or kde-runtime or trash-cli or glib2 or gvfs-client) is needed by github-desktop-2.9.4.linux1-1.x86_64
(libXtst or libXtst6) is needed by github-desktop-2.9.4.linux1-1.x86_64
(libcurl or libcurl4) is needed by github-desktop-2.9.4.linux1-1.x86_64
(libnotify or libnotify4) is needed by github-desktop-2.9.4.linux1-1.x86_64
(libxcb or libxcb1) is needed by github-desktop-2.9.4.linux1-1.x86_64
(mesa-libgbm or libgbm1) is needed by github-desktop-2.9.4.linux1-1.x86_64
(nss or mozilla-nss) is needed by github-desktop-2.9.4.linux1-1.x86_64
rpmlib(RichDependencies) <= 4.12.0-1 is needed by github-desktop-2.9.4.linux1-1.x86_64

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rahedmir profile image
Mir Rahed Uddin

Probably your system is out of date so, check if there are any updates available. or you can install dependencies separately. Suppose you are getting "(libXtst) is needed by github-desktop-2.9.4.linux1-1.x86_64" message. So you install libXtst by running the following command sudo rpm -i libXtst. Repeat this process until all of your dependency issues are resolved then run the GitHub-desktop installer again.

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warns profile image
Mert Alnuaimi

Hi, thanks for the info. While everything looks working fine, whenever I commit anything it takes ages to commit. I have tried before installing in different ways all came out the same.

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rahedmir profile image
Mir Rahed Uddin

Thanks, man. I have last used this application around a month ago and I have not faced any kind of issue. Everything was working as expected. Maybe, the new version is causing some problems, try a few older versions and check if the problem still persistent? If you want you can create an issue also github.com/shiftkey/desktop/issues

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shawnpm profile image
Shawn

Hey thanks! Appreciate you making this.

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rahedmir profile image
Mir Rahed Uddin

Thanks, Shawn glad you liked it :)