.deb is the installation package format used by all Debian based distributions
like Ubuntu, Kali , Linux Mint , Pop!_OS etc. and of course
In this post, I will explain how to install
.deb files on Ubuntu. The same
instructions apply for any other Debian based distribution as mentioned above.
The Ubuntu repositories contain thousands of deb packages that can be
installed either from the Ubuntu Software Center or from the command line
However many applications are not included in the Ubuntu or any 3rd party repositories. Another reason that you’d like to install a local deb package would be their version on default package manager could be old and you’d like to get new version of them.
Those unofficial applications can be downloaded from the developer’s websites
or git repositories and installed manually. But be careful when installing
packages from unofficial sources especially if it’s not open source.
$ wget -O 'vscode-stable.deb' 'https://code.visualstudio.com/sha/download?build=stable&os=linux-deb-x64'
As you may guess from
query paramaters this command will download 64 bit
architecture of Vscode deb package from official Vscode repository as
named vscode-stable.deb in your current working directory.
When it comes to installing deb packages there are command-line or graphical user interface options.
From the command line you have several tools at your disposal as well. In the
following sections, I will show you how to use
dpkg utilities to
install deb packages.
dpkg is a low-level package manager for Debian based systems. Use the
--install flag to install deb packages with
# First update package indices $ sudo apt update # Install via dpkg $ sudo dpkg -i ./vscode-stable.deb
dpkg doesn’t resolve dependencies. If you get any dependency
errors when installing deb packages, you can use the following
to resolve and install all package dependencies:
$ sudo apt install -f
apt is a command-line utility for installing, updating, removing, in short
managing deb packages on Ubuntu, Debian, and related Linux
distributions. It was introduced in Ubuntu 14.04 and combines the most commonly
used commands from
apt package manager will resolve and install all the package dependencies
by itself, so it’s better to use
apt instead of
To install local deb packages with
apt you need to provide the full path
to the deb file. If the file is located in your current working directory
instead of typing the absolute path, you should prepend
./ before the package
apt will try to retrieve and install the package from
Let’s assume you are in the same directory after
wgetting Vscode deb
package, then just simply run:
# First update package indices $ sudo apt update # Install via apt $ sudo apt install ./vscode-stable.deb
We saw how to install local deb packages on a Debian based distribution
—as an example Ubuntu. When installing deb packages prefer using
it resolves and install all the package dependencies.