How to Easily Install Light Table on Ubuntu Linux

Brief: This tutorial shows you how to install Light Table on Ubuntu, Linux Mint and other Ubuntu-based Linux distributions.

Light Table is a feature rich and modern open source editor. It’s not an exaggeration to call it one of the best code editors for Linux. You can download the source code and use it to install Light Table but it requires extra effort in making it searchable or creating a desktop shortcut.

Don’t worry, there are easier ways to install Light Table in Ubuntu. But before we see that, let’s have a look at some of the main features of it.

Light Table features

• Free and open source
• Cross-platform
• Lightweight
• Modern, smart UI with minimalist interface
• Auto-complete
• Inline evaluation
• Customizable with themes and plugins
• Split views and instant feedback
• Command palette
• Fuzzy finder
• Auto updates

Install Light Table in Ubuntu and other Linux

There are two ways to install Light Table in Ubuntu.

• Use an unofficial PPA (works for all Ubuntu based Linux distributions)
• Use Ubuntu Make command line tool (an Ubuntu exclusive way)

Method 1: Install Light Table in Ubuntu using PPA

This unofficial PPA by Anton Yakutovich downloads the latest build of Light Table and installs it. you don’t need to worry about the future updates because Light Table notifies you if there are any new updates available.

The benefit of using the PPA is that you avoid doing all these extra efforts to make it work like a normal application.

In addition to that, this PPA will also work in other Linux distributions based on Ubuntu such as Linux Mint and elementary OS. PPA is available for Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 15.10 and Ubuntu 14.04.

Open a terminal and use the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:dr-akulavich/lighttable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install lighttable-installer

Once installed, you can look for Light Table in Unity Dash and run it.

To uninstall Light Table installed via the above PPA, use the commands below:

sudo apt-get remove lighttable-installer
sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:dr-akulavich/lighttable

Method 2: Install Light Table in Ubuntu using Ubuntu Make

Ubuntu also provides a command line tool, Ubuntu Make, for developers to easily install various programming tools such as IntelliJ IDEA, Android Studio, Ubuntu SDK etc.

I recommend using the official PPA to install the latest version of Ubuntu Make instead of directly installing it from Ubuntu repositories (they contain older version).

Use the commands below to install the latest version of Ubuntu Make.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-desktop/ubuntu-make
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-make

Once you have Ubuntu Make installed, use the commands below to install Light Table:

umake ide lighttable

To uninstall Light Table installed via Ubuntu Make, use the command below:

umake -r ide lighttable

Voila!! You are all good with Light Table. Here is what Light Table looks like on my Ubuntu 16.04:

I am using Paper Theme, in case you wonder about its unusual appearance.

I hope this quick tutorial helped you to install Light Table on Ubuntu. If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to leave a comment.