By admin 
Anthropic has released a beta of its Claude desktop app for Linux, launching alongside an apt repo Ubuntu users can add for ongoing updates.
According to the official docs, Claude desktop for Linux offers “the same Chat, Cowork, and Claude Code experience as macOS and Windows: parallel sessions, visual diff review, an integrated terminal and editor, and live app preview”.
However, not all of the app’s features are yet available.
The Linux beta lacks Computer Use, which lets Claude control apps directly, and voice dictation, both present on macOS and Windows. Anthropic says Computer Use support is coming to Linux in future; no date for dictation.
In my own hands-on with the client – Electron or something similar – I noticed a few other desktop integrations weren’t working.
Prompt completion notifications didn’t appear when the option was turned on, and while the tray icon has an option to Open Quick Entry (a floating input box), it didn’t open anything on my Ubuntu 26.04 LTS desktop when selected.
As a front-end to a cloud service and not a local AI model, you can’t use Claude desktop offline or without an Anthropic account.
Prior to this official beta, many Linux users relied on a community package that reworked files from the Windows build to run on Linux, as well as unofficial wrappers and web-apps for the main Claude website – assuming a standard browser tab wasn’t enough.
If you plan to use Claude for code rather than conversation, you should use the official CLI and API via Claude Code. This can be accessed through most terminals or integrated in your various AI-friendly IDEs, including VSCode.
How to install Claude desktop for Linux
Anthropic says a .deb is available for 64-bit Intel/AMD and Arm64 devices, but there’s no working direct DEB package download at the time I write this. The download page button on Linux links to the docs, and the docs page link back to the download page.
So to try it out, use the official Anthropic apt repository instead. Adding it not only lets you install Claude desktop on Ubuntu 22.04 and later (as well as Debian 12 and later) but ensure you get updates to the app alongside your other system updates.
First, install curl, as this is what Anthropic recommends for fetching their signing key:
sudo apt install curl
Then, fetch the signing key itself:
sudo curl -fsSLo /usr/share/keyrings/claude-desktop-archive-keyring.asc
Now, add the apt repository:
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/claude-desktop-archive-keyring.asc] stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/claude-desktop.list
Finally, refresh your package list and install Claude:
sudo apt update && sudo apt install claude-desktop
Launch Claude from the app grid (or your preferred applications menu). You can also run claude-desktop from a terminal. Sign in with your Anthropic account to start using it.
Anthropic doesn’t yet offer an equivalent build for Fedora/RHEL or Arch users, but says support for additional distros is planned.
Big shout out to Petr for the tip!