install GitHub Desktop on ubuntu

1. Update Packages
   On your Ubuntu Linux, first, run the system update command that ensures all the available package updates are installed on it. Further, this command will also refresh the package index cache of the default package manager i.e APT

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

2. Add ShiftKey GPG Key
   As we know officially GitHub Desktop client app is not available for Linux systems including Ubuntu. Therefore, we are going for the project that is itself hosted on GiitHub – known as GitHub Desktop – The Linux Fork by ShiftKey.

So, on your Ubuntu terminal execute the given command that will add the GPG key of the project, so that we can use the repository offered by the developers of this fork on our system.

wget -qO - https://mirror.mwt.me/shiftkey-desktop/gpgkey | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /etc/apt/keyrings/mwt-desktop.gpg > /dev/null

3. Add GitHub Desktop repository on Ubuntu
   After adding the GPG key, let’s add the repository that offers the GitHub Desktop fork packages to install it on Ubuntu 22.04 or 20.04. The benefit of using a repository method instead of its Debian packages bundled as executable binary is we can easily get the future updates of the application by just running the system update and upgrade command.

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/mwt-desktop.gpg] https://mirror.mwt.me/shiftkey-desktop/deb/ any main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mwt-desktop.list'

Don’t forget to run the system update command once again after adding the repository.

sudo apt update

3. GitHub Desktop installation on Ubuntu 22.04 | 20.04
   Finally, we have integrated all the necessary things we required to download GitHub Desktop App and start its installation on Ubuntu Linux. Now, let’s use Ubuntu’s APT, a built-in package manager, to finally get it on our Linux system.

sudo apt install github-desktop

4. Install Flatpak
   Those who don’t want to use the repository method can go for Flatpak universal package manager. However, unlike Snap, it is not available to use on Ubuntu by default. Therefore, we have to install it manually. Here are the commands to follow.

sudo apt install flatpak

Once the installation is completed, also add the Flathub remote repository that allows us to install various packages available in it on our Linux system.

flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

Completing the above two commands will enable the Flatpak successfully on our Ubuntu OS, however, it is important to reboot our system once. This helps this package manager to integrate itself properly into Linux.

sudo reboot

5. Use Flatpak to install the Linux GitHub Desktop app
   So, after restarting the system let’s use Flatpak to fetch and install the GitHub desktop release on Ubuntu 22.04 or 20.04 Linux via Flathub.

Here is the GitHub Desktop Flatpak Installation Command.

flatpak install -y flathub io.github.shiftey.Desktop

6. Run Linux GitHub Desktop
   It doesn’t matter which method you have used, to run the application simply click on the Activities link of the Taskbar or press the Windows key on your keyboard to search GitHub. As its icon appears click to run the same.