How to Install PyCharm on Linux

JetBrains lists the Toolbox App as its recommended way to install PyCharm on Linux. Snap works as well, but the same guide warns about performance and debugging problems in that build, and the tar.gz archive is what you fall back on when neither suits your machine.

Debian 13 and Amazon Linux 2023 sit on the supported list of JetBrains’ 2026.2 installation guide, next to Ubuntu 24.04 and 26.04 LTS and Fedora 43 and 44.

A lot of tutorials are out of date on this. A DigitalOcean community answer and It’s FOSS’s tutorial still print the snap name pycharm-community, while JetBrains now documents a single package called pycharm. Per its Snap Store listing, the old package’s stable channel was last updated on 12 December 2024.

Which installation method suits your Linux setup?

Toolbox is the default pick, as long as its own requirements page lists your distribution. Snap makes sense when you’re on Ubuntu and want the shortest command. JetBrains names Toolbox the recommended installer for its IDEs, but the requirements page (dated 20 July 2026) only lists Ubuntu 22.04 and 24.04 LTS, Fedora 42 and 43 and Amazon Linux 2023. That’s narrower than PyCharm’s own list.

The tar.gz archive suits locked-down machines and custom install paths. Flatpak and the AUR exist too, though JetBrains’ installation guide documents neither.

The update and launch details for the first three rows come from JetBrains’ PyCharm 2026.2 installation guide (page dated 8 September 2026). The Flatpak and AUR rows reflect how those package managers normally behave.

JetBrains Toolbox App

One window handles installing, updating and rolling back builds, and it can keep several PyCharm versions side by side, early access builds included. Sign in to a JetBrains Account and it activates your licenses too.

The downsides are real, though. Nine library packages have to be present before it runs. Toolbox App 2.6.2 and earlier ship as an AppImage, so on Ubuntu they also needed libfuse2. And Toolbox’s own requirements page lists fewer distributions than PyCharm’s guide does.

Snap package

One line installs it, and updates arrive without you touching anything.

The catch is in JetBrains’ installation guide. It warns that the snap build can show performance degradation, Chromium-based JavaScript debugging problems and slow file operations, and it recommends Toolbox instead.

Most tutorials still rank snap first, so the advice you find elsewhere disagrees with the vendor.

tar.gz archive

This one works on any distribution, with no snapd or Toolbox in the way. JetBrains recommends /opt if you follow the filesystem hierarchy standard, and that part needs sudo. ARM64 gets its own separate tarball. Updates are entirely on you.

Pick it when policy dictates the install path.

Flatpak and the AUR

As far as JetBrains’ guide goes, both count as third-party packaging, so neither gets vendor troubleshooting.

They make sense if Flathub or an AUR helper already runs your whole system. Otherwise Toolbox causes less friction.

Choosing by distribution

On Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, go with Toolbox first. Ubuntu 26.04 LTS isn’t on Toolbox’s requirements page, so snap or tar.gz are the documented routes there, and snap is the shortest.

Fedora is split. Toolbox works on 43 (its requirements page lists Fedora 42 and 43, not 44), and tar.gz works on either release. Snap needs snapd and a symlink before it does anything.

Debian 13 starts with tar.gz, since Toolbox’s requirements page does not list Debian.

Arch Linux and openSUSE sit outside JetBrains’ supported list, so you get no vendor support whichever route you pick. Arch users can also go through the AUR.

What are the PyCharm system requirements on Linux?

The hardware ask is small. The distribution list is the tight part. Everything below comes from JetBrains’ installation guide for 2026.2 (page dated 8 September 2026).

You need 8 GB of total RAM, with 3 GB of it available to the IDE processes, plus 4 CPU cores (x86\_64 or arm64), 10 GB of disk and glibc 2.28 or later.

Supported distributions and desktops

JetBrains lists Ubuntu 24.04 and 26.04 LTS, Fedora 43 and 44, Debian 13 and Amazon Linux 2023.

GNOME and KDE Plasma are the listed desktop environments, and BSD-based systems are not supported. Everything else, Arch Linux and openSUSE included, falls outside vendor support.

Java and the bundled runtime

You don’t need to install Java. JetBrains Runtime ships inside the IDE and is based on JBR 21.

Configurations with a changed JRE or JDK aren’t supported. Installs with removed or altered distribution files, plugin files included, aren’t either.

Where JetBrains’ own pages disagree

The 2025.3 installation guide listed an X Window System (X11) requirement and Linux kernel 6.x, with the two latest Ubuntu LTS or Fedora releases. The 2026.2 guide drops the kernel and display server lines and names exact releases instead.

The RAM figures changed too. The 2025.3 installation guide set a minimum of 2 GB of free RAM and recommended 8 GB of total RAM, while the 2026.2 installation guide asks for 8 GB total, with 3 GB available to the IDE processes.

Treat the 2026.2 numbers as the planning baseline. The new table also says nothing about Wayland either way, so test the display server on your own machine before rolling PyCharm out to a team.

Which PyCharm edition do you get after installing?

Only one product comes down now, simply named PyCharm. JetBrains merged Community and Professional into a single unified build starting with PyCharm 2025.1, according to its Unified PyCharm overview.

What the free tier covers

Every fresh install starts with a 30-day Pro trial, per JetBrains’ Unified PyCharm overview. After that, core functionality stays free (Jupyter Notebook support included) and the advanced features need a Pro subscription. So you either subscribe to keep the Pro features or do nothing and keep the free core.

Activation goes through a JetBrains Account sign-in. Inside Toolbox, that same sign-in activates the available licenses for every IDE you install.

How the old split ended

PyCharm Community 2025.2 was the last standalone release.

From 2025.3, Community users move to the unified build, and existing Professional licenses carry over unchanged. If you want to see how the former editions differed, there is a breakdown of how Community and Professional compared before the merge.

Package names that changed

Older tutorials print snap commands for packages that no longer match JetBrains’ current guidance.

Reference date: October 2026, based on the three Snapcraft listings and JetBrains’ 2026.2 installation guide.

How to install PyCharm with the JetBrains Toolbox App

Download the Toolbox tarball, run its launcher once, and pick PyCharm from the product list. JetBrains calls this the recommended route for its IDEs.

Before you start

JetBrains’ 2026.2 guide says nine packages must be present before Toolbox will run: libxi6, libxrender1, libxtst6, mesa-utils, libfontconfig, libgtk-3-bin, tar, dbus-user-session and libxcb-keysyms1.

Those are Debian and Ubuntu package names. Fedora packages the same libraries under different names.

Install steps

1. Download the Linux tarball from the Toolbox App page on jetbrains.com.
2. Unpack it where you want it to live: tar -xvf jetbrains-toolbox-<version>.tar.gz -C <installation-directory>
3. Open a terminal in that directory and run ./bin/jetbrains-toolbox. If the archive created a jetbrains-toolbox-<version> folder, run it from inside that folder.
4. Let the first launch finish. It creates ~/.local/share/JetBrains/Toolbox and a .desktop entry in ~/.local/share/applications.
5. Sign in to your JetBrains Account so Toolbox can activate licenses for each IDE you install.
6. Select PyCharm and install it. For an older build, open the three-dot menu and choose Available versions.

Updates and rollback

Toolbox updates installed IDEs and rolls a build back when a release misbehaves. It keeps multiple builds of the same IDE, early access releases included.

To find where an install landed, open the IDE’s settings in Toolbox, expand Configuration, and read the Install location field.

If the Toolbox App will not start

Toolbox App 2.6.2 and earlier are packaged as an AppImage and require FUSE. JetBrains’ current Toolbox documentation limits that requirement to those versions and names libfuse2 as the fix on Ubuntu. If one of those builds fails at launch with a missing FUSE2 message, the fix is one line: sudo apt-get install -y libfuse2

The PyCharm guide’s package list leaves libfuse2 out, which matches the Toolbox documentation. Toolbox App 2.3 (April 2024) added a native Linux ARM64 build that was also packaged as an AppImage and required FUSE, per the JetBrains Toolbox blog.

How to install PyCharm with snap

Run sudo snap install pycharm --classic and launch the IDE with pycharm. The --classic flag is mandatory because the PyCharm snap needs full system access, like a traditionally packaged application, according to JetBrains’ installation guide.

Snaps refresh on their own, so you never download a new build by hand.

Install steps

1. Get snapd running. Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and later ship it preinstalled. On Debian, run sudo apt install snapd. On Fedora, run sudo dnf install snapd, then log out and back in.
2. Fedora only: create the symlink classic snaps need with sudo ln -s /var/lib/snapd/snap /snap, as Snapcraft’s Fedora instructions describe.
3. Install the package: sudo snap install pycharm --classic
4. Launch it with pycharm or from the application menu.
5. Confirm the install with sudo snap list.

Channels and specific versions

Stable is the default channel and carries released versions only. For early access builds, switch to edge with sudo snap install pycharm --classic --edge.

To pin a version, list what exists with snap info pycharm, then run sudo snap install pycharm --channel=<version>/stable --classic.

Where the snap route breaks

For the snap build, JetBrains lists performance degradation, JavaScript debugging problems with Chromium, trouble importing SBT projects and delays in file management operations. Its guide points those users to Toolbox.

Fedora Silverblue is a harder stop. Snapcraft’s documentation says its read-only root filesystem blocks the /snap symlink that classic snaps rely on.

How to install PyCharm from the tar.gz archive

Unpack the archive into /opt, run the launcher from its bin folder, then create a desktop entry from inside the IDE. No installer runs, so nothing registers with a package manager.

Install steps

1. Download the tarball from the PyCharm download page and compare it against the SHA checksum linked there.
2. Unpack it. JetBrains recommends /opt under the filesystem hierarchy standard: sudo tar xzf pycharm-*.tar.gz -C /opt/
3. No sudo, or a Downloads folder that blocks execution? Unpack elsewhere: tar xzf pycharm-*.tar.gz -C <new_archive_folder>
4. Switch to the launcher folder: cd /opt/pycharm-*/bin
5. Start the IDE with ./pycharm, then open Tools | Create Desktop Entry from the main menu.

Which launcher: pycharm or pycharm.sh

JetBrains’ 2026.2 installation guide runs ./pycharm from the bin folder. The 2026.2 first-run page tells Linux users to run the pycharm.sh shell script in the same place.

Both pages carry the same version label, so JetBrains’ own documentation disagrees with itself. List the folder and use whichever launcher your extracted build contains.

Desktop entry and PATH

The built-in menu action writes the desktop entry for you, so skip hand-written files.

Copying an old recipe is where people get tripped up. Community-era tutorials set StartupWMClass=jetbrains-pycharm-ce, while UbuntuHandbook’s 2025.3 update uses jetbrains-pycharm. That value decides how your dock groups PyCharm windows.

For PATH, symlink the launcher into a directory already on it, for example ln -s /opt/pycharm-<version>/bin/pycharm ~/.local/bin/pycharm.

Installing PyCharm with Flatpak or on Arch Linux

Neither route comes from JetBrains. Flathub labels its PyCharm listing community-provided, and Arch builds its own package for the Extra repository.

Flatpak from Flathub

The listing that carries the 2026.2.2 build uses the app ID com.jetbrains.PyCharm-Professional. Flathub marks it Unverified and states that JetBrains neither verifies nor supports it. The download is 1 GiB, per the Flathub listing.

1. Add Flathub if it is missing: flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
2. Install: flatpak install flathub com.jetbrains.PyCharm-Professional
3. Launch: flatpak run com.jetbrains.PyCharm-Professional

Older tutorials install com.jetbrains.PyCharm-Community. A 2025.3-era UbuntuHandbook guide reports that listing as discontinued after the merge, and the Professional ID keeps its suffix even though PyCharm is now one product.

Arch Linux: Extra first, AUR second

Arch’s Extra repository carries pycharm-community-edition, packaged by Arch maintainers under an Apache-2.0 license. Install it with sudo pacman -S pycharm-community-edition.

The Arch package page lists 2026.2.3-1 in Extra, built on 21 September 2026.

An Apache-2.0 license points to the open-source Community code. The unified build with Pro features comes from JetBrains’ own channels.

AUR packages are user-submitted. Check the maintainer and the last update date before building one, and stay with the Extra package unless it lacks something you need.

Pros and cons

Flatpak installs per user, without root, and updates through flatpak update. Against that, it’s community-provided, so there’s no JetBrains support, and the sandbox limits what the IDE reaches. Confirm your project folder and Python interpreter are visible from inside it.

The Arch Extra package gets pacman tracking updates and removal, and it’s signed by an Arch packager. It’s the open-source Community build only, and it can trail JetBrains’ release schedule.

Toolbox or the tar.gz archive beats both unless your workflow already revolves around Flathub or pacman.

What should you set up on first launch?

Import or skip settings, pick a theme, then create a project with the default Project venv. Five steps get a script running.

First-launch steps

1. At the Import Settings dialog, choose another IDE’s settings or skip. Skipped settings can be imported later from a ZIP archive.
2. Pick a color theme or keymap on the Welcome screen.
3. Check that Python is installed. JetBrains says Linux machines already have it, and python.org covers the rest.
4. Click New Project, choose Pure Python, set the location and keep the default Project venv.
5. Add a Python file and run it with Ctrl+Shift+F10.

Supported Python versions

PyCharm supports Python 2.7 and Python 3.9 up to 3.15, according to JetBrains’ 2026.2 installation guide.

A base interpreter outside that range is marked unsupported, so install a newer Python before creating the environment.

Choosing the interpreter type

The Add Local Interpreter dialog offers Virtualenv, Conda, Pipenv, Poetry, uv and Hatch, and a plain system interpreter works too. A step-by-step walkthrough for adding an interpreter in PyCharm covers each field.

You can change it later from the Python Interpreter selector on the status bar, or with Ctrl+Alt+S, then Python | Interpreter. The Inherit packages checkbox maps to the --system-site-packages option of virtualenv.

Still undecided between tools? This comparison of venv, Conda and Poetry lays out the trade-offs.

How do you update and uninstall PyCharm on Linux?

Each method has its own update and removal path. The table lists the commands, and the sections below cover what stays behind.

Updating by method

A new major version of PyCharm uses a fresh set of IDE directories, according to JetBrains’ documentation. The first-launch Import Settings dialog then lists settings found from other installs on the machine.

For the in-IDE route, there is a short guide on updating PyCharm.

Uninstalling and the directories it leaves

JetBrains’ uninstall page names three Linux directories to delete once you are sure you will not need the settings. Configuration sits in ~/.config/JetBrains/<product><version>, caches and logs in ~/.cache/JetBrains/<product><version>, and plugins in ~/.local/share/JetBrains/<product><version>.

Remove the desktop entry too if you created one. A separate guide covers uninstalling PyCharm step by step.

A mismatch in JetBrains’ pages

The 2026.1 uninstall page still lists pycharm-professional and pycharm-community as the snap names to remove. The 2026.2 installation guide installs a package called pycharm.

Remove the name you actually installed.

Cleaning up old IDE directories

PyCharm deletes caches and logs for older versions untouched for 180 days, according to JetBrains’ page on IDE directories.

Configuration and plugin directories stay forever unless you remove them. Run Help | Delete Leftover IDE Directories to pick versions you no longer use.

When does the PyCharm install fail or run badly on Linux?

Most problems come down to a launcher that will not run, an inotify watch limit warning, or rendering trouble under Wayland. Each has a cause and a fix.

The launcher will not run

JetBrains says to unpack into a different folder when the Downloads folder does not support file execution.

It’s FOSS’s tutorial also runs chmod u+x pycharm.sh before the first launch, which restores a missing executable bit.

The inotify watch limit warning

JetBrains recommends raising fs.inotify.max_user_watches to 1048576. Its support article, which now carries a deprecation notice, says the default can fall short for reasonably sized projects, and the IDE then falls back to recursive directory scans.

Check the current value with sysctl fs.inotify.max_user_watches, then set fs.inotify.max_user_watches = 1048576 in a file under /etc/sysctl.d/. Look around before you add a new file, because some distributions set it elsewhere, such as /usr/lib/sysctl.d/30-tracker.conf on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.

A JetBrains support thread shows the warning persisting on Ubuntu 24.04.1 with PyCharm 2024.2.1 at a limit of 524288. Staff traced it to bug IJPL-74471, and a later reply reported it on a PhpStorm 2024.3.1 build, so a raised limit does not always silence it.

Rendering problems under Wayland

JetBrains’ platform blog (February 2026) announced native Wayland by default in 2026.1 EAP builds, with general rollout planned for a later major version. Desktops without Wayland support keep running the IDE as an X application.

To go back to X11, OMG! Ubuntu reported that you add -Dawt.toolkit.name=XToolkit to the IDE’s custom VM options (Help | Edit Custom VM Options).

Under native Wayland the compositor controls window placement, so dialogs can open somewhere unexpected, and window decorations can differ from the rest of the desktop. Remote development keeps running without native Wayland.

FAQ About Installing PyCharm on Linux

Can you install PyCharm on Linux without sudo?

Yes, with the tar.gz archive or the Toolbox App. Unpack the archive into a folder you own, since only /opt needs root.

Toolbox installs into your home directory once its dependency libraries are present. Snap always needs sudo.

Does PyCharm have an official apt or dnf repository?

No. JetBrains’ installation guide documents Toolbox, snap and tar.gz only.

A community-run APT repository exists, but JetBrains does not publish it, and it wraps the same Linux tarball, according to LinuxCapable’s 2026 Ubuntu and Debian guides.

Does PyCharm run on ARM Linux machines?

Yes. JetBrains lists arm64 CPUs next to x86\_64 and ships a separate ARM64 tarball.

Toolbox has had a native Linux ARM64 build since version 2.3 in April 2024, and Flathub lists aarch64 builds of its PyCharm package.

Can you run PyCharm inside WSL 2?

Not as a supported setup. The installation guide lists no WSL option for the Linux IDE, and its remote development requirements say WSLg graphics forwarding is not supported.

Install PyCharm on Windows instead and add a WSL interpreter. JetBrains offers that option on Windows only, and lists it among its Pro interpreter features.

Can two PyCharm versions run side by side?

Yes. Toolbox installs several versions of the same IDE, and each major version keeps its own configuration directory.

Archives unpacked into separate folders behave the same way, so settings do not collide.

Switching PyCharm Install Methods Without Losing Settings

Moving between the Toolbox App, snap and tar.gz keeps your PyCharm settings, because JetBrains stores them per product and version under your home directory, not per install method.

A same-version install reads the existing configuration folder in place. A new major version opens the Import Settings dialog, which files installs untouched for more than 6 months under Other Options, according to JetBrains’ first-run documentation.

Do the switch in a safe order so a failed launch never leaves you without a working IDE. Install the new method beside the old one, launch it and confirm your settings load, and remove the old install last.

Flatpak is the exception to verify first, since its sandbox limits what the IDE sees.

JetBrains changes its supported distribution list between major releases, so recheck the installation guide at each upgrade (position verified 7 October 2026). Once the install holds, learning how to use PyCharm day to day is the logical next step.

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Bogdan Sandu

Bogdan Sandu is a front-end developer at TMS Outsource with 8+ years of experience in web technologies. He writes about developer tools, software platforms, and web workflows based on daily hands-on use.

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