Install Atom Text Editor on Debian 10 - Step by Step Process ?

Atom is a powerful, open-source, and highly configurable text editor developed by GitHub. It can be installed in Linux, MacOS, and Windows OS. 

With its higher extensibility and flexibility, you can handle any development and coding related tasks. 

This feature-rich text editor has a built-in package manager from where you can choose from thousands of packages to add new functionalities to your text editor. Some other features of Atom include smart auto-completion, find and replace, syntax highlighting, a lot of keyboard shortcuts and multiple panes, and so on.

Here at LinuxAPT, as part of our Server Management Services, we regularly help our Customers to perform Software Installation Tasks on Ubuntu Linux System.

In this context, we shall look into how to install Atom text editor on Debian 10 system.


How to install Atom Text Editor on Debian ?

Before proceeding with this installation procedure, ensure that you have sudo access to install/remove the Atom text editor on your system.

There are following two ways to install Atom text editor on the Debian system:

a. Installing Atom via apt

b. Installing Atom via .deb package


a. How to install Atom via apt on Debian ?

Atom is not available in the default repositories of the Debian system. To install Atom, we will configure the Debian package manager apt to use the Atom package repositories. This will also let you update Atom once it releases a new version.

You can follow the steps given below.


1. Add the repository key

Before adding the Atom repository to your system apt sources, you will first need to add its key to apt. By doing so, your system will trust this repository.

To add the Atom repository's key to apt's keyring, issue the below command in Terminal:

$ wget -qO - https://packagecloud.io/AtomEditor/atom/gpgkey | sudo apt-key add -

You can see OK in the below output, which confirms the key has been added successfully.


2. Add Atom's repository to apt sources

Now you will need to add the Atom’s repository to apt sources. Execute the below command in Terminal to do so:

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


3. Update apt

After adding the Atom's repository, you will need to update apt. Issue the below command in Terminal to do so:

$ sudo apt-get update


4. Install Atom Text editor

Now you can install Atom text editor using the apt package manager. Here is the command to do so:

$ sudo apt-get install atom

When the Terminal prompts you with Y/n option, press Y to carry on the installation of Atom.

It will take a while after which Atom will be installed on the system.


b. How to install Atom via dpkg package ?

Atom text editor can also be installed via its .deb package. In this procedure, we will first download Atom .deb package and then install it via dpkg.

To do this, follow the steps given below.


1. Download Atom .deb package

To download the Atom .deb package, go to the GitHub website  and download atom-amd64.deb. Alternatively, you can also use the below command to download the Atom .deb package:

$ wget https://github.com/atom/atom/releases/download/v1.54.0/atom-amd64.deb


2. Install Atom

Once the .deb package is downloaded, move to the directory where the downloaded package has been saved. Then in order to install the .deb package, issue the below command in Terminal:

$ sudo dpkg -i atom-amd64.deb

After running the above, you might receive an error about missing dependencies. 

If this is the case, you can install those dependencies using the below command:

$ sudo apt-get -f install


How to verify installation of Atom on Debian ?

To verify the installation and to view the version of Atom installed, issue the below command in Terminal:

$ atom --version


How to Launch Atom on Debian ?

In order to launch Atom text editor, hit the super key and type atom in the search bar.

Then click the Atom icon from the search results in order to launch it.

Atom default view will be displayed.


How to uninstall Atom from Debian system ?

If you need to uninstall Atom from your system, you can do so using the below command in Terminal:

$ sudo apt-get remove atom

It will prompt you with Y/n choice. 

Press Y if you really want to uninstall Atom.

Now Atom will be removed from your system. 

To uninstall the dependencies too, use the below command:

$ sudo apt-get autoremove


[Need urgent assistance in fixing missing packages on Debian System? We are available to help you. ]

This article covers how to install Atom text editor on the Debian system. Atom is a very powerful text editor.

The Atom user interface is very clean and it has support for many important features such as split view, Git integration and so on. Atom is cross platform. It runs on Linux, Windows and macOS.


To Enable snaps on Debian and install Atom:

Snaps are applications packaged with all their dependencies to run on all popular Linux distributions from a single build. They update automatically and roll back gracefully. 

1. Enable snapd

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install snapd
$ sudo snap install core

2. To install Atom, simply use the following command:

$ sudo snap install atom --classic


To Update Atom Text Editor on Debian:

You can update the Atom when a new version is available. You can update it through your desktop standard Software Update tool. 

Alternatively, you can update by running the following commands in your terminal:

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt upgrade

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