Install or upgrade to the latest Arduino IDE on Linux
In an earlier article on the Geekcreit UNO I showed you how you can download and install the Arduino IDE from the Ubuntu/Mint software repositories. Although it is quick and easy, it doesn’t install a recent version of the IDE. If you want the latest and greatest, below is the way to do it. If you want to learn how to install the Arduino IDE on Windows, you should follow this link instead.
Multiple versions?
You can have multiple versions of the IDE on one computer without any problems. All the versions will be installed in their own separate directories. It will probably be a good idea to rename the shortcuts on the desktop and the application menu or you might end up with multiple “Arduino IDE” shortcuts, which can be confusing. It will be a bit more practical to rename each shortcut to “Arduino IDE <version number>”. How to rename shortcuts on Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon, see below.
Download and install the Arduino IDE
First, you should visit the downloads section of the official Arduino website and get the version for your operating system. I am running Linux Mint 64-bit so I chose the “Linux 64 bits” version.
The latest version number at the time of writing was 1.8.0. So I ended up with the file “arduino-1.8.0-linux64.tar.xz” in my Downloads folder.
Head over to the folder where you downloaded the file (e.g. “Downloads”) and extract the file using the Archive Manager by double-clicking it.
After the extraction, open a terminal window (CTRL+ALT+T) and go into the Downloads folder:
cd ~/Downloads
Move the folder containing the extracted files to the “/opt” directory. The “/opt” directory is the directory reserved for all the software and add-on packages that are not part of the default Linux installation. Remember to change version number “1.8.0” to the version you downloaded!
sudo mv arduino-1.8.0 /opt
Go into the new Arduino directory:
cd /opt/arduino-1.8.0/
List the files:
ls -l
You should see a file “install.sh”, the installation script. Make it executable by using “chmod +x”:
chmod +x install.sh
Finally, run the installation script by typing:
sudo ./install.sh
This will install the IDE and create the shortcuts in the application menu and on the desktop.
Linux Mint Cinnamon: renaming shortcuts
Here is how to rename the shortcuts, which might be handy when you want to install multiple versions of the IDE.
For the application menu (a.k.a. start menu or main menu):
- Right-click the “Menu” button on the taskbar and choose “Configure…”;
- The window “Applets”, click “Open the menu editor”;
- Window “Main menu”: on the left, select “Programming”, on the right, select “Arduino IDE”, and then click “properties”;
- And the window “launcher properties”: change the name, and finally click “Ok”.
For the desktop icon:
- Right-click the icon, choose “properties”;
- Then, change the name and click “Close”.
Hi – I am not strong with using terminal and your instructions are great, but when I executed the install.sh, the following messages were produced, and I am not sure what to do now. Thanks for your help!
I forgot to paste in the results of running install.sh:
Adding desktop shortcut, menu item and file associations for Arduino IDE…touch: cannot touch ‘/home/clarkpontius/.local/share/icons/hicolor/.xdg-icon-resource-dummy’: No such file or directory
touch: cannot touch ‘/home/clarkpontius/.local/share/icons/hicolor/.xdg-icon-resource-dummy’: No such file or directory
touch: cannot touch ‘/home/clarkpontius/.local/share/icons/hicolor/.xdg-icon-resource-dummy’: No such file or directory
touch: cannot touch ‘/home/clarkpontius/.local/share/icons/hicolor/.xdg-icon-resource-dummy’: No such file or directory
touch: cannot touch ‘/home/clarkpontius/.local/share/icons/hicolor/.xdg-icon-resource-dummy’: No such file or directory
touch: cannot touch ‘/home/clarkpontius/.local/share/icons/hicolor/.xdg-icon-resource-dummy’: No such file or directory
touch: cannot touch ‘/home/clarkpontius/.local/share/icons/hicolor/.xdg-icon-resource-dummy’: No such file or directory
touch: cannot touch ‘/home/clarkpontius/.local/share/icons/hicolor/.xdg-icon-resource-dummy’: No such file or directory
touch: cannot touch ‘/home/clarkpontius/.local/share/icons/hicolor/.xdg-icon-resource-dummy’: No such file or directory
touch: cannot touch ‘/home/clarkpontius/.local/share/icons/hicolor/.xdg-icon-resource-dummy’: No such file or directory
touch: cannot touch ‘/home/clarkpontius/.local/share/icons/hicolor/.xdg-icon-resource-dummy’: No such file or directory
touch: cannot touch ‘/home/clarkpontius/.local/share/icons/hicolor/.xdg-icon-resource-dummy’: No such file or directory
touch: cannot touch ‘/home/clarkpontius/.local/share/icons/hicolor/.xdg-icon-resource-dummy’: No such file or directory
touch: cannot touch ‘/home/clarkpontius/.local/share/icons/hicolor/.xdg-icon-resource-dummy’: No such file or directory
touch: cannot touch ‘/home/clarkpontius/.local/share/icons/hicolor/.xdg-icon-resource-dummy’: No such file or directory
touch: cannot touch ‘/home/clarkpontius/.local/share/icons/hicolor/.xdg-icon-resource-dummy’: No such file or directory
touch: cannot touch ‘/home/clarkpontius/.local/share/icons/hicolor/.xdg-icon-resource-dummy’: No such file or directory
touch: cannot touch ‘/home/clarkpontius/.local/share/icons/hicolor/.xdg-icon-resource-dummy’: No such file or directory
xdg-mime: file ‘/opt/arduino-1.8.2/lib/cc.arduino.arduinoide.xml’ does not exist
xdg-icon-resource: icon name ‘cc.arduino.arduinoide’ does not have a proper vendor prefix
A vendor prefix consists of alpha characters ([a-zA-Z]) and is terminated
with a dash (“-“). An example icon name is ‘example-cc.arduino.arduinoide’
Use –novendor to override or ‘xdg-icon-resource –manual’ for additional info.
xdg-icon-resource: icon name ‘cc.arduino.arduinoide’ does not have a proper vendor prefix
A vendor prefix consists of alpha characters ([a-zA-Z]) and is terminated
with a dash (“-“). An example icon name is ‘example-cc.arduino.arduinoide’
Use –novendor to override or ‘xdg-icon-resource –manual’ for additional info.
xdg-icon-resource: icon name ‘cc.arduino.arduinoide’ does not have a proper vendor prefix
A vendor prefix consists of alpha characters ([a-zA-Z]) and is terminated
with a dash (“-“). An example icon name is ‘example-cc.arduino.arduinoide’
Use –novendor to override or ‘xdg-icon-resource –manual’ for additional info.
xdg-icon-resource: icon name ‘cc.arduino.arduinoide’ does not have a proper vendor prefix
A vendor prefix consists of alpha characters ([a-zA-Z]) and is terminated
with a dash (“-“). An example icon name is ‘example-cc.arduino.arduinoide’
Use –novendor to override or ‘xdg-icon-resource –manual’ for additional info.
xdg-icon-resource: icon name ‘cc.arduino.arduinoide’ does not have a proper vendor prefix
A vendor prefix consists of alpha characters ([a-zA-Z]) and is terminated
with a dash (“-“). An example icon name is ‘example-cc.arduino.arduinoide’
Use –novendor to override or ‘xdg-icon-resource –manual’ for additional info.
xdg-icon-resource: icon name ‘cc.arduino.arduinoide’ does not have a proper vendor prefix
A vendor prefix consists of alpha characters ([a-zA-Z]) and is terminated
with a dash (“-“). An example icon name is ‘example-cc.arduino.arduinoide’
Use –novendor to override or ‘xdg-icon-resource –manual’ for additional info.
xdg-icon-resource: icon name ‘cc.arduino.arduinoide’ does not have a proper vendor prefix
A vendor prefix consists of alpha characters ([a-zA-Z]) and is terminated
with a dash (“-“). An example icon name is ‘example-cc.arduino.arduinoide’
Use –novendor to override or ‘xdg-icon-resource –manual’ for additional info.
xdg-icon-resource: icon name ‘cc.arduino.arduinoide’ does not have a proper vendor prefix
A vendor prefix consists of alpha characters ([a-zA-Z]) and is terminated
with a dash (“-“). An example icon name is ‘example-cc.arduino.arduinoide’
Use –novendor to override or ‘xdg-icon-resource –manual’ for additional info.
xdg-icon-resource: icon name ‘cc.arduino.arduinoide’ does not have a proper vendor prefix
A vendor prefix consists of alpha characters ([a-zA-Z]) and is terminated
with a dash (“-“). An example icon name is ‘example-cc.arduino.arduinoide’
Use –novendor to override or ‘xdg-icon-resource –manual’ for additional info.
xdg-desktop-menu: filename ‘cc.arduino.arduinoide.desktop’ does not have a proper vendor prefix
A vendor prefix consists of alpha characters ([a-zA-Z]) and is terminated
with a dash (“-“). An example filename is ‘example-cc.arduino.arduinoide.desktop’
Use –novendor to override or ‘xdg-desktop-menu –manual’ for additional info.
xdg-desktop-icon: filename ‘cc.arduino.arduinoide.desktop’ does not have a proper vendor prefix
A vendor prefix consists of alpha characters ([a-zA-Z]) and is terminated
with a dash (“-“). An example filename is ‘example-cc.arduino.arduinoide.desktop’
Use –novendor to override or ‘xdg-desktop-icon –manual’ for additional info.
xdg-mime: file ‘/opt/arduino-1.8.2/lib/cc.arduino.arduinoide.xml’ does not exist
done!
I think the install failed, as I found nothing to configure, and no Arduino IDE was there on the right to select.
Thanks for your help
-Clark
Hi Clark, I’m sorry to hear that it didn’t work for you.
I Googled for a bit and came across this issue which seems similar to your problem:
https://github.com/arduino/Arduino/issues/6116
The solution seems to be:
https://github.com/arduino/Arduino/issues/6116#issuecomment-290012812
Maybe this will solve your problem too. Good luck!
Very helpful, thank you!
Took me forever because i am such a newbie to the command line stuff (had to do a lot of /cd’s because my directories were different and some renaming to make it suit) but i eventually got it figured out and your instructions worked GREAT! Thank you so much for this because i could never have figured it out. You sir are a Gentleman and a Scholar! Thanks!
y
Thank you for your message, I’m glad it was useful for you 🙂