Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code comes to Linux

The free integrated development environment debuts on Linux as an Ubuntu Snap application.

Microsoft’s embrace of Linux continues with the software maker bringing its free Visual Studio Code application to Linux as a Snap application. While it was made available as a standard Linux application earlier in 2019, offering it as a Snap app is a canny move in our opinion. Snaps are containerised packages that can run natively on a variety of Linux distros, which means Microsoft doesn’t need to fiddle about making sure it’s supported on each distribution – and it can be automatically updated as well. An unofficial community-created version of

Visual Studio Code was released in May 2017, but if you were holding out for official support from Microsoft, you’ll want to download the new version from https://snapcraft.io/ code. There are also early ‘Insider’ builds for

you to test at https://snapcraft.io/codeinsiders. As Venturebeat reports at http://bit. ly/lxfvisualstudiocode, Canonical engineering manager Evan Dandrea explained that “Developers are the lifeblood of Snaps and it is great to see this recognition from Microsoft as they join a host of others who can now provide their users with the latest updates seamlessly, and with assurance of rollbacks and containment.”

Considering the recent performance improvements for Snap apps (see page 6), and the auto-update features, the snap version of

Visual Studio Code for Linux looks like it could be the definitive release for most people. However, if you’re not too keen on Microsoft’s software, check out Vscodium (https://vscodium.com) as a telemetry-free open source alternative.