How to Install GitHub Desktop on latest Fedora Linux

Are you tired of typing git commands in your terminal? Do you want a GUI for Git on Linux so it’s easier to manage your repositories?

With the latest version of Fedora Linux distro, it finally became possible to install GitHub Desktop client on Linux. And now one can use the world’s leading version control system without getting headaches from terminal commands!

In this article, I will explain the simple steps you need to follow in order to install GitHub Desktop on your latest Fedora Linux version. So, if you’re ready, then let’s dive right into the commands to have this app on our system.

Steps to install GitHub Desktop client app on Fedora Linux

The commands and other steps given here are not just limited to Fedora Linux only, you can use them for other RPM-based Linux distros as well. Such as Rocky Linux, Almalinux, CentOS, RedHat, Oracle Linux, and more… If you are not an RPM Linux user then you probably want to Install GitHub Desktop App on Ubuntu 22.04 or 20.04 Linux

1. Perform Fedora Update

Open your command terminal on Fedora Linux and first execute the system update command to install various available security updates and patches. This is important to make sure our system is fully up to date before installing some applications including the GitHub Desktop GUI client Linux app.

To do this, on your terminal app type:

sudo dnf update

This command will check for any available updates and install them automatically.

2. Add GPG key and Repository

If we go through the official website of GitHub then we will find its Desktop application is only available for Windows and MacOS operating systems. However, because of its open-source code, few community developers pick the project and made it available for Linux systems including Fedora, the project is hosted on GitHub and known as GitHub Desktop – The Linux fork by ShiftKey.

Apart from the RPM packages, developers also offer this GIT GUI client application in APPImage format, if someone is not interested in adding an additional repository to his system.

There are two RPM package repositories offered by the developers, one is ShiftKey, and the other is mirror MWT, in case any of them is not working, users can switch to the other.

Note: Use only one of them, not both: However, MWT is recommended for fast speed.

ShiftKey repo:

sudo rpm --import https://rpm.packages.shiftkey.dev/gpg.key
sudo sh -c 'echo -e "[shiftkey-packages]\nname=GitHub Desktop\nbaseurl=https://rpm.packages.shiftkey.dev/rpm/\nenabled=1\ngpgcheck=1\nrepo_gpgcheck=1\ngpgkey=https://rpm.packages.shiftkey.dev/gpg.key" > /etc/yum.repos.d/shiftkey-packages.repo'

Mirror MWT:

sudo rpm --import https://mirror.mwt.me/shiftkey-desktop/gpgkey
sudo sh -c 'echo -e "[mwt-packages]\nname=GitHub Desktop\nbaseurl=https://mirror.mwt.me/shiftkey-desktop/rpm\nenabled=1\ngpgcheck=1\nrepo_gpgcheck=1\ngpgkey=https://mirror.mwt.me/shiftkey-desktop/gpgkey" > /etc/yum.repos.d/mwt-packages.repo'

After Adding the package repository, run the system update command to rebuild the DNF package manager cache.

sudo dnf update

3. Installing GitHub Desktop client on Fedora

So, far we were preparing our Fedora Linux to download the packages we required to install this GIT client. Now, let’s use Yum or DNF to install it.

sudo yum install github-desktop

or

sudo dnf install github-desktop
Adding GitHub Desktop repository

4. Run Linux GitHub Desktop

If you are at this step then you would already have completed all the above-given commands successfully and the application is on the system, right? So, it’s time to run and start using this GIT client app.

For that, either click on the Activities link given in the Fedora Linux Taskbar and search for it, or in the command terminal type – github-desktop to open it.

Login with GitHub.com or Github Enterprise account to access your package repositories.

Search for Github linux desktop
Running GitHub Linux on Fedora

5. How to get future updates

Installation of future updates for the GitHub Desktop client on Fedora is not a difficult thing. As we have used a repository to install this application, therefore running merely the system update will install the latest version of it as well, if made available by the developers.

sudo dnf update

6. Uninstall – GitHub Desktop from Fedora Linux

I know all the developers would not be happy after installing this Git GUI client application or some of them won’t require it anymore at some point in time; in such as situation we can remove the GitHub Desktop client app from Fedora Linux completely using the given command:

sudo dnf remove github-desktop

Depending upon the repository you have used, you can remove it as well.

For Shiftkey repo users:

sudo rm  /etc/yum.repos.d/shiftkey-packages.repo

For MWT repo users:

sudo rm /etc/yum.repos.d/mwt-packages.repo

Conclusion

At last, I want to say installing GitHub Desktop on Fedora Linux is a simple process that requires minimal effort. After downloading the package using the repository and package manager, you can easily install the GIt GUI app from GitHub to begin collaborating on projects and managing your code. As a bonus, you can also take benefit of the additional features available when running it on Linux such as SSH keys and GPG signing for commits. With the help of this tutorial, you should have no trouble installing the GitHub Desktop GIT client app on the Fedora RPM distro.

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