How To Install Upterm On Linux

Looking for a terminal emulator and a developer suite in one? Upterm has you covered. The best way to install Upterm on Linux is to grab the AppImage. The developers have gone this way because it can be a bit of a pain to have to make packages for a ton of different Linux distributions.

SPOILER ALERT: Scroll down and watch the video tutorial at the end of this article.

Install Upterm

To get started, go to the releases page and download the latest version of the AppImage. Once downloaded, open up a terminal window and use the mkdir command to create an AppImage folder.

Creating an AppImage folder is a great idea because of how these types of files work. The instant you open them, they run and develop references in that folder. If you open an AppImage file directly from the ~/Downloads directory, you may end up accidentally deleting it, or forget what the file is for. Having a dedicated folder is a solution to these problems.

mkdir ~/AppImages

Note: use a “.” if you wish to hide your AppImage folder from view. Keep in mind that hiding this folder will make things a little more tedious. You will need to click “show hidden files” to launch the file for the first time.

mkdir ~/.AppImages

Place the Upterm AppImage inside the new folder (located in your /home/username/ directory). Then, using the chmod command, update the permissions of the file so that it can execute as a program. Changing permissions is critical, or Upterm will not work correctly.

chmod +x upterm-0.4.3-x86_64-linux.AppImage

With the permissions updated, go to ~/AppImages and select “open” to start it for the first time.

Please keep in mind that because Upterm is distributed via a downloadable AppImage file, you’ll need to check the release page for a new version periodically. To update, go to ~/AppImages, delete the old file, replace it with the new one. Update the permissions (as shown above).

Desktop Shortcut For Upterm

Since the Upterm client is an AppImage, users can go to ~/AppImages inside the /home/username/ folder, double-click on the file and run it with ease. However, if you’d like to be able to launch this program like any other one, you’ll need to create an individual desktop shortcut file. Here’s how to do it.

First, use the wget tool to download the image we will use for the icon:

cd ~/AppImages

wget https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/188928/30751825-360450ec-9fc3-11e7-879e-8b6af737b11b.png

Using mv rename the image file.

mv 30751825-360450ec-9fc3-11e7-879e-8b6af737b11b.png uptermicon.png

Then move the terminal back to your Home folder. From there, open up the Nano text editor to create a new desktop shortcut.

cd ~/

sudo nano upterm.desktop

Write this code (or paste it in with Ctrl + Shift + V):

[Desktop Entry] Name=Upterm Comment=A terminal emulator for the 21st century. Exec=/home/username/AppImages/upterm-0.4.3-x86_64-linux.AppImage Icon=/home/username/AppImages/uptermicon.png Type=Application StartupNotify=true Categories=Development;

Be sure to change the username in the code above to the name of the user you will be using Upterm on. With all the information entered, press Ctrl + O to save, and Ctrl + X to exit Nano. Then, update the permissions of the file, using chmod.

sudo chmod +x upterm.desktop

Finally, install the shortcut to the system by using the mv command.

sudo mv upterm.desktop /usr/share/applications/

Please keep in mind that each time you update upterm, you will need to change Exec= in the desktop file. Here’s how:

sudo nano /usr/share/applications/upterm.desktop

Find Exec=/home/username/AppImages/upterm-0.4.3-x86_64-linux.AppImage and change it to the new filename you downloaded. Save the changes you’ve made to the upterm.desktop file in Nano with Ctrl + O.

Want to uninstall Upterm from the system? Here’s how. First, delete the desktop shortcut from /usr/share/applications/.

sudo rm /usr/share/applications/upterm.desktop

Then, delete the file from the ~/AppImages folder.

rm upterm-*-x86_64-linux.AppImage

When both of these files are removed from the system, Upterm should disappear from the menus. Feel free to also delete the icon image from the folder as well with:

rm ~/AppImage/uptermicon.png

Arch Linux Instructions

The AppImage should work on 99% of Linux distributions, but if you’re on Arch Linux and you would rather install Upterm as a native application, you’ll need to grab it from the AUR. First, you’ll need to grab the “git” package to interact with the AUR. Install it using the Pacman package manager.

sudo pacman -S git

Now that you’ve got the git tool, use it to clone the latest version of the Upterm PKGBUILD file.

git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/upterm.git

Now that the PKGBUILD is on your PC, use the CD command to navigate to the upterm folder.

cd upterm

Run the makepkg command to start the build process. When running this command with the -si option, Arch will go out and automatically install any dependencies that it can find via the official software repositories. Somtimes it doesn’t get all of them. If this happens, you’ll need to go over to the Upterm AUR page and install them manually.