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John Ajera
John Ajera

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Installing Kiro on Fedora / Red Hat

#kiro #fedora #ide #development

Installing Kiro on Fedora / Red Hat

Kiro is an AI-powered development environment by AWS. This guide walks you through installing the Kiro desktop IDE and optional CLI on Fedora or Red Hat-based systems.

1. Overview

What this guide does:

  • Installs the Kiro IDE desktop app from the official download server
  • Sets up a desktop entry so you can launch Kiro from your application menu
  • Optionally installs the Kiro CLI (kiro-cli and q) for command-line use

Requirements: Fedora or Red Hat-based Linux (x64).

2. Prerequisites

Install required tools before starting:

sudo dnf install -y curl unzip jq
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3. Install Kiro IDE (Desktop App)

Run these steps to install the full IDE from the official Kiro download server.

Step 1: Get the latest tarball URL and download 

KIRO_URL=$(curl -fsSL https://prod.download.desktop.kiro.dev/stable/metadata-linux-x64-stable.json | jq -r '.releases[].updateTo.url | select(endswith(".tar.gz"))' | head -1)
curl -L -o /tmp/kiro.tar.gz "$KIRO_URL"
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Step 2: Extract and install 

mkdir -p ~/.local/share/kiro
tar -xf /tmp/kiro.tar.gz -C ~/.local/share/kiro --strip-components=1
rm /tmp/kiro.tar.gz
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Step 3: Add to PATH 

mkdir -p ~/.local/bin
ln -sf ~/.local/share/kiro/kiro ~/.local/bin/kiro
echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc
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Step 4: Create desktop entry 

mkdir -p ~/.local/share/applications
cat > ~/.local/share/applications/kiro.desktop << EOF
[Desktop Entry]
Name=Kiro
Exec=$HOME/.local/share/kiro/kiro %u
Icon=$HOME/.local/share/kiro/resources/app/resources/linux/code.png
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Development;TextEditor;
EOF
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Step 5: Launch 

kiro
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Or launch Kiro from your application menu.

4. Install Kiro CLI (Optional)

For the command-line tools only:

curl -fsSL https://cli.kiro.dev/install | bash
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Installs kiro-cli and q to ~/.local/bin.

5. Summary

  1. Install prerequisites: curl, unzip, jq.
  2. Download the latest Kiro tarball from the official metadata, extract to ~/.local/share/kiro.
  3. Symlink to ~/.local/bin, add to PATH, and create a desktop entry.
  4. Launch Kiro from the terminal or application menu.
  5. Optionally install the Kiro CLI for kiro-cli and q.

6. Troubleshooting

Issue: kiro command not found after installation

Solution: Ensure ~/.local/bin is in your PATH. Run source ~/.bashrc or open a new terminal. If using a different shell (e.g. zsh), add export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH" to ~/.zshrc.

Issue: Desktop entry does not appear in application menu

Solution: Run update-desktop-database ~/.local/share/applications (if available) or log out and back in so the desktop environment picks up the new entry.

Issue: jq fails when fetching metadata

Solution: Ensure jq is installed (sudo dnf install -y jq). If the metadata URL changes, check the Kiro download documentation for the current URL.

7. References

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