Now you have no excuse to lose track of your code. Go forth, commit visually, and enjoy the best of both worlds: the stability of Debian and the simplicity of GitHub’s design. Happy coding!
Enter . The official, open-source GUI client from GitHub has long been a staple on macOS and Windows, but Linux users were left in the cold—until recently. Thanks to the open-source community (and an unofficial deb package), you can now install GitHub Desktop on Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and other derivatives for free . github desktop deb free
| Feature | GitHub Desktop (Deb/Free) | GitKraken | Git Cola | | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | | | Free | Freemium (paid pro) | Free | | GitHub Integration | Native & Official | Good | Basic | | CI/CD Checks | Shows PR checks | No | No | | Performance | Moderate (Electron) | Heavy (Electron) | Light (Python/Qt) | | Learning Curve | Very low | Medium | High | Now you have no excuse to lose track of your code
# Clone the Linux fork git clone https://github.com/shiftkey/desktop.git cd desktop yarn install Build the Linux deb package yarn build:linux Your .deb will be in the 'dist' folder | Feature | GitHub Desktop (Deb/Free) | GitKraken
/usr/bin/github-desktop If it complains about libgio or GLib , you may need to install:
By using the package from the Shiftkey repository, you can install, update, and manage GitHub Desktop on Debian 11 (Bullseye), Debian 12 (Bookworm), Ubuntu 22.04, Linux Mint 21, and beyond. Quick Recap Commands: # Add the repository wget -qO - https://mirror.mwt.me/shiftkey-desktop/gpgkey | sudo tee /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/shiftkey-desktop.asc > /dev/null sudo sh -c 'echo "deb [arch=amd64] https://mirror.mwt.me/shiftkey-desktop/deb/ any main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/packagecloud-shiftkey-desktop.list' Install for free sudo apt update && sudo apt install github-desktop Launch github-desktop