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.
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 ]
References https://github.com/shiftkey/desktop
Watch on YouTube
Thanks for reading :)
Top comments (16)
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:
Go to github.com/shiftkey/desktop/releases
Scroll down to "Assets" and click it to expand and see the
downloadables.
Download the .deb, .rpm, .snap or .AppImage depending on which
distribution you're running.
run the command
sudo apt install ~/Downloads/whicheverfileYouJustDownloaded
Enjoy your GH Desktop on Linux!
Made my day, thx
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.
Version 2.6.6 Linux RC1 released a few hours ago, check if those problems still persist or not in the newest version
how do I update it?
Here is the link github.com/shiftkey/desktop/releas...
couldn't muster the effort to figure out how to install the updated version yet.
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).
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...
Absolute banger, thanks for the tip, trialling now on POP_OS!
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
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 installlibXtstby running the following commandsudo rpm -i libXtst. Repeat this process until all of your dependency issues are resolved then run the GitHub-desktop installer again.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.
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
Hey thanks! Appreciate you making this.
Thanks, Shawn glad you liked it :)