How to use Claude Code on Linux in 2026: 8 ways compared

Disclosure: Enjoy is our product. We checked every way below against its maker’s own pages on November 9, 2026, and we say where another way is the better pick, including the free ones that don’t need Enjoy.

Ways to use Claude Code on Linux, compared

Claude Code runs natively on Linux. Anthropic’s setup page lists “Ubuntu 20.04+,” “Debian 10+” and “Alpine Linux 3.19+,” with “4 GB+ RAM, x64 or ARM64 processor.” The choices are how you install it, which decides how it updates, and whether you want it in a terminal, an editor, a window or a browser.

Way	Best for	Price, checked November 9, 2026	Distributions	You use it in
Anthropic’s installer	Most people; it updates itself	A Claude plan: Pro is $20 a month	Ubuntu 20.04+, Debian 10+, Alpine 3.19+; x64 or ARM64	Your terminal
apt, dnf or apk	Updates with the rest of your system	The same plans	Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, RHEL, Alpine	Your terminal
Claude’s desktop app, in beta	A window, from Anthropic	Included in Pro, Max ($100), Ultra ($200), Team and Enterprise	Ubuntu 22.04+, Debian 12+; x86_64 or arm64	The app’s Code tab
VS Code or a JetBrains IDE	Staying in your editor	Included in the same plans	Wherever your editor runs	A panel, or the IDE’s terminal
Zed	An open-source editor with Claude Code in a thread	Free; your Claude plan pays for Claude Code	x86_64 or ARM, best with a Vulkan GPU	Zed’s threads
Cloud sessions	Nothing to install	Pro, Max, Ultra and Team, within your limits	Any, in a browser	Your browser
Enjoy	Claude Code beside other labs’ agents	A monthly subscription, free for 7 days (pricing)	x64: AppImage, .deb for Ubuntu or Debian, .rpm for Fedora	Enjoy’s window
Orca	Many agents side by side, free	Free	x64 and arm64: AppImage, .deb, .rpm, and the AUR	Orca’s window

Prices are per month as each maker lists them, before tax. Claude Code itself needs “a Pro, Max, Ultra, Team, Enterprise, or Console account,” Anthropic says, and “The free claude.ai plan does not include Claude Code access.” Pro is $20 a month, or $17 a month billed yearly, on Claude’s pricing page. Zed, Enjoy and Orca run Claude Code on that same plan.

Which way works on your distribution

• Ubuntu and Debian: every way here. Claude’s desktop app needs Ubuntu 22.04 or Debian 12 or later.
• Fedora and RHEL: the CLI, from Anthropic’s dnf repository “For Fedora and RHEL” or its installer. Claude’s desktop app isn’t there yet: “only Debian-based distributions are supported today,” its Linux page says. Enjoy and Orca ship .rpm packages.
• Arch and others: for distributions “that aren’t Debian-based, such as Fedora or Arch,” Anthropic says to “run the CLI instead.” On Arch that means its installer or npm, or the community-maintained claude-code package in the AUR. For a window, Enjoy and Orca publish AppImages, and Orca an AUR package.
• Alpine and other musl systems: the CLI, with extra packages, below.
• ARM machines: the CLI, Claude’s desktop app and Orca run on arm64. Enjoy is x64 only.

The CLI, with Anthropic’s installer

Best for: most people, on a desktop or a server.

The installer Anthropic marks “Recommended” is one line:

curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bash

Then run claude in your project and sign in in your browser. “Native installations automatically update in the background,” and the launcher lives at ~/.local/bin/claude. If your shell then says claude: command not found, that folder isn’t on your PATH: the installer reports “Native installation exists but ~/.local/bin is not in your PATH.” and, its troubleshooting page says, “prints the fix with that note but doesn’t change PATH itself.”

On a server without a browser, press c at the login prompt to copy the login URL, open it on your own computer, and paste the code the browser shows at the prompt that begins Paste code here. On a small VPS, “A Killed message during install usually means the Linux out-of-memory (OOM) killer terminated the claude install step”; Anthropic’s fix is to free memory or add swap.

On Alpine, the installer “requires bash and curl,” and Claude Code needs “libgcc, libstdc++, and ripgrep at runtime”: run apk add bash curl libgcc libstdc++ ripgrep, then set USE_BUILTIN_RIPGREP to 0 in your settings.

Price: the Claude plan, from Pro at $20 a month.

Watch for: the sandbox needs packages of its own, and “By default, when the platform doesn’t support the sandbox or the dependency check at startup fails, Claude Code runs commands without sandboxing.” Its setup is below. And if you use npm instead, Anthropic says “Do NOT use sudo npm install -g.”

The CLI from apt, dnf or apk

Best for: machines you keep up to date with your package manager, and Fedora or RHEL.

“Claude Code publishes signed apt, dnf, and apk repositories,” each with two channels: “stable serves a version that is typically about one week old, skipping releases with major regressions, and latest serves every release as soon as it ships.” On Fedora or RHEL, the stable channel is:

sudo tee /etc/yum.repos.d/claude-code.repo <<'EOF'
[claude-code]
name=Claude Code
baseurl=https://downloads.claude.ai/claude-code/rpm/stable
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://downloads.claude.ai/keys/claude-code.asc
EOF
sudo dnf install claude-code

On Debian and Ubuntu, Anthropic’s setup page has you download its key, check that its fingerprint is 31DDDE24DDFAB679F42D7BD2BAA929FF1A7ECACE, add the repository and run sudo apt install claude-code.

Price: the same plans.

Watch for: “Package manager installations do not auto-update through Claude Code,” and “apt, dnf, and apk continue to require a manual upgrade because those commands need elevated privileges.” Upgrades come with sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade claude-code, sudo dnf upgrade claude-code or apk update && apk upgrade claude-code. The AUR package is community-maintained, not one of these.

Turn on the sandbox

The sandbox is “a boundary that the operating system enforces around the shell commands Claude runs,” limiting the files and network domains they reach, and “The sandbox runs on macOS, Linux, and WSL2,” Anthropic’s sandboxing page says. On Linux it “relies on” two packages, bubblewrap and socat:

sudo apt-get install bubblewrap socat   # Ubuntu or Debian
sudo dnf install bubblewrap socat       # Fedora

Restart Claude Code and run /sandbox; a Dependencies tab lists anything still missing. On Ubuntu, Claude Code can say “Ubuntu’s AppArmor restriction on user namespaces stops bubblewrap here.” Anthropic’s page gives an AppArmor profile for /usr/bin/bwrap as the fix. Its other one, sudo sysctl -w kernel.apparmor_restrict_unprivileged_userns=0, “lifts the restriction for every program on the machine and lasts until you reboot.” To have Claude Code refuse to start without a sandbox, set sandbox.failIfUnavailable to true.

Claude’s desktop app, in beta

Best for: a window instead of a terminal, from Anthropic, on Ubuntu or Debian.

“Linux support for the Claude desktop app is in beta,” and it gives “the same Chat, Cowork, and Claude Code experience as on macOS and Windows: parallel sessions, visual diff review, an integrated terminal and editor, and live app preview,” Anthropic’s Linux page says. It needs “Ubuntu 22.04 or later, or Debian 12 or later” on “x86_64 or arm64.” You add Anthropic’s apt repository, run sudo apt update && sudo apt install claude-desktop, and launch Claude or claude-desktop. “The desktop app doesn’t update itself on Linux”; new versions come with your system’s updates.

It reaches other machines too. In an SSH session, “The remote machine can run Linux, macOS, or Windows. Desktop installs Claude Code on the remote machine automatically the first time you connect,” so a Linux server you reach from Ubuntu, a Mac or a PC needs no setup of its own.

Price: included in every paid plan: Pro at $20 a month, or $17 billed yearly, Max at $100, Ultra at $200, Team and Enterprise.

Watch for: “Fedora and RHEL: only Debian-based distributions are supported today.” The beta doesn’t have “Computer Use,” and “voice input isn’t available in the Linux desktop app.” It keeps your sign-in in “your desktop’s keyring, such as GNOME Keyring or KDE Wallet,” and without an unlocked one “you sign in again each time you launch the app.” For an API key, it says “use the CLI.” It runs only Claude.

Claude Code in VS Code or a JetBrains IDE

Best for: people who already work in VS Code, one of its forks, or IntelliJ, PyCharm and the other JetBrains IDEs.

“The VS Code extension provides a native graphical interface for Claude Code, integrated directly into your IDE,” Anthropic’s docs say. Press Ctrl+Shift+X, search for “Claude Code” and install it; it needs “VS Code 1.94.0 or later.” Anthropic submits it to “the Visual Studio Marketplace and Open VSX Registry,” so forks that install from Open VSX can get it too. The JetBrains plugin works differently: it “runs the claude command in your IDE’s integrated terminal and connects to it,” and Ctrl+Esc opens it.

Price: included in the same plans. “Any paid Claude subscription (Pro, Max, Ultra, Team, or Enterprise) or a Claude Console account works, and no API key is required.”

Watch for: “Installing the extension does not put claude on your shell PATH,” and “Some features are only available in the CLI.” The JetBrains plugin “does not bundle its own copy of the CLI, so install both pieces.” Anthropic adds that extension marketplaces “are third-party software, which Anthropic doesn’t endorse, maintain, or audit,” and in October tampered copies of the VS Code extension reached Cursor’s marketplace for about 11 hours.

Zed

Best for: an open-source editor with Claude Code in a thread beside your code.

Zed installs on Linux with curl -f https://zed.dev/install.sh | sh, and its Linux page says it “works best” on systems with “a Vulkan compatible GPU” and glibc 2.31 or later on x86_64, or 2.35 on ARM. Its code is “licensed primarily under GPL-3.0-or-later.” Zed’s setup by company offers two ways to run Claude: a Terminal Thread with the Claude Code CLI itself, the “Native Claude Code experience,” billed to your “Claude subscription or Claude Code auth”; or Claude Agent, “Claude in an External Agent thread,” through the Agent Client Protocol.

Price: “Zed is free to use,” and “Zed does not charge for External Agents,” its docs say. Your Claude plan pays for Claude.

Watch for: Zed says “Claude Pro and Max subscriptions are separate from Anthropic API credits. If you want Claude subscription-limit behavior, use Claude Agent or Claude Code where supported.” The Terminal Thread is the way it ties to your plan, and there, Zed’s own profiles, permissions and skills “do not automatically apply to Terminal Threads.”

Cloud sessions, in your browser

Best for: any distribution or a borrowed machine, with nothing to install.

“A cloud session is a Claude Code session that runs on cloud infrastructure instead of on your machine,” Anthropic’s cloud docs say. Start one at claude.ai/code, in the desktop app, or with claude --cloud in your terminal, and it “keeps running after you close your laptop.” When claude --cloud uploads a local repository, on Linux “Claude Code leaves uncommitted changes to files named like credentials or keys out of the upload,” such as .env files.

Price: “Cloud sessions are available on Pro, Max, Ultra, and Team plans,” and for some Enterprise seats. Each “counts toward your plan’s usage limits,” and “there’s no separate charge for the cloud VM.”

Watch for: “repository cloning in Anthropic-hosted environments and pull request creation require GitHub.” A GitLab or Bitbucket repository can go up as a bundle, but “the session can’t push results back to that remote.”

Enjoy

Best for: Claude Code beside other labs’ agents in a desktop app, including on Fedora, where Claude’s own app doesn’t run yet.

Enjoy runs Claude Code, Codex, Grok Build, Antigravity, Muse Code, and local models through OpenCode, on Linux, Mac and Windows, on the plans you already have. Its download page has an AppImage, a .deb for Ubuntu or Debian and an .rpm for Fedora. It installs Claude Code for you from Anthropic’s official installer “without administrator access,” and signs it in through your browser. Then:

• Switch agents mid-conversation. When Claude is the wrong fit or out of usage, Codex or another agent picks up the same conversation.
• Keep going through limits. When Claude Code runs out, Enjoy switches to another of your accounts that still has usage, or waits for the limit to reset, then continues.
• Worktrees and parallel work. Each conversation runs its own agent, and an agent can work in a worktree, a separate copy of your project on its own branch.
• Your phone and any browser. The same conversations, while your computer is on with Enjoy open.

Price: Enjoy is one monthly subscription, and the first seven days are free, with a card to start. It includes your phone and any browser and one computer; each other computer is $9.99 a month, and each teammate you invite needs a subscription of their own. See pricing.

Watch for: Enjoy isn’t open source, and it’s a monthly subscription on top of your Claude plan once the free week ends. Its install guide asks for “a Linux computer with a 64-bit (x64) processor,” so ARM machines can’t run it. The AppImage updates itself and needs “FUSE 2, xdg-utils, and desktop-file-utils,” but “If you installed the .deb or .rpm package, download the latest package from enjoy.dev to update.” It needs “a keyring service such as GNOME Keyring installed and running,” and on Linux, “closing the Enjoy window quits Enjoy,” so leave it open, or minimized, for your phone to reach it. Scheduled workflows run only while your computer is awake with Enjoy open.

Orca

Best for: many agents side by side, free and open source, on x64 or ARM.

Orca, from Stably AI, says “Run Claude Code, Codex, and any other coding agent in parallel, each in its own worktree.” It’s “Free and open source for macOS, Windows, and Linux,” under the MIT license on GitHub. Its latest release, 1.4.255 on November 9, has Linux AppImages and .deb and .rpm packages for x64 and arm64, and its README gives yay -S stably-orca-bin for the AUR. For Claude Code, it “reads your local ~/.claude usage state and shows current usage plus rate-limit proximity,” and swaps between Claude accounts “in one click.”

Price: free. Your Claude plan pays for Claude Code.

Watch for: you install and sign in to Claude Code yourself: its Claude Code page says to install it with npm “or follow Anthropic’s docs,” then “Log in once from any terminal.” For agents on an always-on machine, “Orca does not sell managed VPS hosting,” its ways to run page says, so that machine is yours to run.

When to stay with the terminal

If claude already runs in your terminal, you don’t need anything else. Anthropic’s installer keeps it updated, the CLI “supports a wider range of Linux distributions” than Claude’s desktop app, and with bubblewrap and socat it has the sandbox. On Ubuntu or Debian, Claude’s desktop app adds a window, diffs and parallel sessions at no extra cost. Add another app when you want several sessions you can see at once on Fedora or Arch, or other labs’ agents in the same place.

How we compared

We read Anthropic’s Claude Code pages on setup, installation troubleshooting, sandboxing, the desktop app on Linux and over SSH, VS Code, JetBrains and cloud sessions, Claude’s pricing, the AUR’s claude-code page, Zed’s Linux, AI and pricing docs and its GitHub page, Orca’s homepage, docs, GitHub page and latest release, and Enjoy’s own help on November 9, 2026, and every one is linked below. We quote each maker’s own words for its limits and leave out what it hasn’t documented. These apps change weekly, so we recheck this guide against its sources at least once a month, and the date at the foot of the page says when we last did.