How to install Intellij IDEA on Ubuntu?

Question

I'm new to Ubuntu and Linux in general. I want to code in Java on my computer, but I'm having problems installing IntelliJ IDEA on Ubuntu. I have downloaded and extracted the file and for some reason renamed the folder to idea. I tried moving the folder to /usr/share/applications or something but I didn't have permission. I used sudo -i in terminal to gain permission but didn't manage to get out of root folder. Can anyone help me with a step by step way to move the folder, create a shortcut in the search bar or whatever it's called and install it properly?

Answer 1

I needed to install various JetBrains tools on a number of machines from CLI, so I wrote a tiny tool to help with that. It also uses cleaner APIs from JB making it hopefully more stable, and works for various JB tools.

Feel free to try it: https://github.com/MarcinZukowski/jetbrains-installer

Answer 2

You can also try my ubuntu repository: https://launchpad.net/~mmk2410/+archive/ubuntu/intellij-idea

To use it just run the following commands:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:mmk2410/intellij-idea
sudo apt-get update

The community edition can then installed with

sudo apt-get install intellij-idea-community

and the ultimate edition with

sudo apt-get install intellij-idea-ultimate

Answer 3

Note: This answer covers the installation of IntelliJ IDEA. For an extended script, that covers more JetBrains IDEs, as well as help for font rendering issues, please see this link provided by brendan.
Furthermore, a manual Desktop Entry creation is optional, as newer versions of IntelliJ offer to create it on first startup.

---

I have my intellij int /opt folder. So what I do is:

• Download Intellij
• Extract intellij to /opt-folder: sudo tar -xvf <intellij.tar> -C /opt/ (the -C option extracts the tar to the folder /opt/)
• Create a Desktop Entry File called idea.desktop (see example file below) and store it anywhere you want (let's assume in your home directory)
• Move the idea.desktop from your home directory to /usr/share/applications: sudo mv ~/idea.desktop /usr/share/applications/

Now (in a lot) Ubuntu versions you can start the application after the GUI is restarted. If you don't know how to do that, you can restart your PC..

idea.desktop (this is for community edition version 14.1.2, you have to change the paths in Exec= and Icon= lines if the path is different for you):

[Desktop Entry]                                                                 
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=IntelliJ IDEA
Comment=IntelliJ IDEA
Exec=/opt/ideaIC-14.1.2/bin/idea.sh
Icon=/opt/ideaIC-14.1.2/bin/idea.png
Terminal=false
StartupNotify=true
Type=Application

---

Edit
I also found a shell script that does this for you, here. The given script in the link installs Oracle Java 7 for you and gives you the choice between Community and Ultimate Edition. It then automatically downloads the newest version for you, extracts it and creates a desktop entry.
I have modified the scripts to fulfill my needs. It does not install java 8 and it does not ask you for the version you want to install (but the version is kept in a variable to easily change that). You can also update Intellij with it. But then you have to (so far) manually remove the old folder! This is what i got:

Edit2
Here is the new version of the script. As mentioned in the comments, breandan has updated the script to be more stable (the jetbrains website changed its behavior). Thanks for the update, breandan.

#!/bin/sh

echo "Installing IntelliJ IDEA..."

# We need root to install
[ $(id -u) != "0" ] && exec sudo "$0" "$@"

# Attempt to install a JDK
# apt-get install openjdk-8-jdk
# add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/java && apt-get update && apt-get install oracle-java8-installer

# Prompt for edition
#while true; do
#    read -p "Enter 'U' for Ultimate or 'C' for Community: " ed 
#    case $ed in
#        [Uu]* ) ed=U; break;;
#        [Cc]* ) ed=C; break;;
#    esac
#done
ed=C

# Fetch the most recent version
VERSION=$(wget "https://www.jetbrains.com/intellij-repository/releases" -qO- | grep -P -o -m 1 "(?<=https://www.jetbrains.com/intellij-repository/releases/com/jetbrains/intellij/idea/BUILD/)[^/]+(?=/)")

# Prepend base URL for download
URL="https://download.jetbrains.com/idea/ideaI$ed-$VERSION.tar.gz"

echo $URL

# Truncate filename
FILE=$(basename ${URL})

# Set download directory
DEST=~/Downloads/$FILE

echo "Downloading idea-I$ed-$VERSION to $DEST..."

# Download binary
wget -cO ${DEST} ${URL} --read-timeout=5 --tries=0

echo "Download complete!"

# Set directory name
DIR="/opt/idea-I$ed-$VERSION"

echo "Installing to $DIR"

# Untar file
if mkdir ${DIR}; then
    tar -xzf ${DEST} -C ${DIR} --strip-components=1
fi

# Grab executable folder
BIN="$DIR/bin"

# Add permissions to install directory
chmod -R +rwx ${DIR}

# Set desktop shortcut path
DESK=/usr/share/applications/IDEA.desktop

# Add desktop shortcut
echo -e "[Desktop Entry]\nEncoding=UTF-8\nName=IntelliJ IDEA\nComment=IntelliJ IDEA\nExec=${BIN}/idea.sh\nIcon=${BIN}/idea.png\nTerminal=false\nStartupNotify=true\nType=Application" -e > ${DESK}

# Create symlink entry
ln -s ${BIN}/idea.sh /usr/local/bin/idea

echo "Done."  

---

Old Version

#!/bin/sh                                                                                                                                   

echo "Installing IntelliJ IDEA..."

# We need root to install
[ $(id -u) != "0" ] && exec sudo "$0" "$@"

# define version (ultimate. change to 'C' for Community)
ed='U'

# Fetch the most recent community edition URL
URL=$(wget "https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/download/download_thanks.jsp?edition=I${ed}&os=linux" -qO- | grep -o -m 1 "https://download.jetbrains.com/idea/.*gz")

echo "URL: ${URL}"
echo "basename(url): $(basename ${URL})"

# Truncate filename
FILE=$(basename ${URL})

echo "File: ${FILE}"

# Download binary
wget -cO /tmp/${FILE} ${URL} --read-timeout=5 --tries=0

# Set directory name
DIR="${FILE%\.tar\.gz}"

# Untar file
if mkdir /opt/${DIR}; then
    tar -xvzf /tmp/${FILE} -C /opt/${DIR} --strip-components=1
fi

# Grab executable folder
BIN="/opt/$DIR/bin"

# Add permissions to install directory
chmod 755 ${BIN}/idea.sh

# Set desktop shortcut path
DESK=/usr/share/applications/IDEA.desktop

# Add desktop shortcut                     
echo -e "[Desktop Entry]\nEncoding=UTF-8\nName=IntelliJ IDEA\nComment=IntelliJ IDEA\nExec=${BIN}/idea.sh\nIcon=${BIN}/idea.png\nTerminal=false\nStartupNotify=true\nType=Application" > ${DESK}

echo "Done."    

Answer 4

In a simple manner you can also try to just run a pre-packaged docker with intellij, I found the good job of @dlsniper : https://hub.docker.com/r/dlsniper/docker-intellij/

you just need to have docker installed and to run :

docker run -tdi \
       --net="host" \
       --privileged=true \
       -e DISPLAY=${DISPLAY} \
       -v /tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix \
       -v ${HOME}/.IdeaIC2016.1_docker:/home/developer/.IdeaIC2016.1 \
       -v ${GOPATH}:/home/developer/go \
       dlsniper/docker-intellij

Answer 5

Recent IntelliJ versions allows automatic creation of desktop entry. See this gist

1. Launch from commandline. If launching for the first time, setup will ask about creating a desktop launcher icon; say yes. Or else after launching (ie. from the commandline) any time, use the IDEA menu Configure > Create Desktop Entry . That should create /usr/share/applications/intellij-idea-community.desktop
2. Trigger the Ubuntu desktop search (ie. Windows key), find the Intellij IDEA you used to create the desktop entry.
3. Drag the icon it's showing into the Ubuntu Launcher.

Answer 6

I find and follow this youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbW-doAiAvI

Basically, download the tar.gz package, extract into /opt/, and then run the "idea.sh" under bin folder (i.e. /opt/idea-IC-163.7743.44/bin/idea.sh)

Enjoy