Installing Arduino IDE on Linux

Question

I downloaded arduino-1.8.4-linux32.tar.xz and ran install.sh as outlined (the very sketchy instructions) in https://www.arduino.cc/en/Guide/Linux

This seemed to work OK, so I removed 354M of what I thought was the installer, only to discover that I had deleted arduino.

The so-called install.sh on closer inspection seemed only to create links into the uncompressed download in my home directory.

The whole process seems very un-Linux like; I had assumed that it would be installed in /usr/share/ like most Linux programs.

I realise I could extract into /usr/share/ and set permissions for other users, but surely there must be others who have wanted to do the same. The macOS version seems to have a proper installer; does one exist for Linux?

• Edgar Bonet: There is a .deb package that properly installs everything. Alas, it's for the ancient Arduino 1.0.5.
• user31481: Live with it. Many years ago I learnt the hard way not to mess with installed files. I will never fill my hard drive anyway, so, why take the risk?
• Pablo A: I mentioned here about the flatpak versions (cross-distro)

Answer 1

The problem here is that there are multiple flavours of linux each with their own installation and package management systems - Aptitude, Yum, EMerge, etc.

It is not easy for Arduino to keep up with creating packages for each and every system, so instead they create a single tarball that can be used on any of the systems.

At one point Arduino (or someone, anyway) used to create Debian packages for the IDE and upload them to the main Debian repository - however this has not been done for many years now and the packages in the Debian repositories are very much out of date (1.0.5 IIRC).

If you, as a system manager, choose to deploy the IDE system wide then it is your task to decide how best to do that.

One option is to just copy the contents of the archive to /usr/share/arduino and then run ./install.sh from within that directory.

• Edgar Bonet: There is some work being done for packaging a newer Arduino, but it seems there are some non trivial issues in the way: bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=780706

Answer 2

I ran the following to Install the latest Arduino IDE on my Raspberry Pi3. This should work all Pi models. This release enables you to run the Arduino Software (IDE) on many of the mini PC boards based on ARM6+ processors currently on the market, including Raspberry Pi

# Installing Arduino IDE
cd /usr/share/
sudo tar xf /home/pi/arduino-1.8.9-linuxarm.tar.xz
sudo chown root:root -R /usr/share/arduino-1.8.9/
# Adding desktop shortcut, menu item and file associations for Arduino IDE
# Each user needs to repeate this
cd
/usr/share/arduino-1.8.9/install.sh

There is a similar instruction in MagPi61 except they suggest installation in /opt

Answer 3

I wrote an installation instruction for the Arduino 2.0.x IDE over at AskUbuntu.

I chose to install the files in the /opt directory, but opinions differ on that topic. The instruction also elaborates on adding desktop links and an icon for Ubuntu flavors.