Zoom is an easy-to-use video calling, chatting and screen sharing application. It has seen unprecedented growth in popularity and a sheer number of users in recent months, mostly due to the current global pandemic we are facing.
The service is available on multiple platforms and its plethora of features offers everyone something they can appreciate. It is also available on almost all Linux distributions, which (of course) includes Ubuntu 20.04.
So, in this tutorial let us see how to install Zoom on Ubuntu 20.04. We can install Zoom via the official site or by using snap re-pack provided on the snapcraft store.
Install Zoom from the Command line using .deb Package
Zoom is not available in the official Ubuntu 20.04 repositories. To install it on an Ubuntu machine, you need to download the latest Zoom deb package from the official Zoom download website.
Using the wget command, we can easily download and install Zoom from the command line just as easily.
To get started, first, open the Terminal window in Ubuntu by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T. Then, issue the following command to download the latest Zoom deb package via wget.
wget https://zoom.us/client/latest/zoom_amd64.deb
Once you have downloaded the Zoom deb package, you can proceed to install it by using the dpkg command which is a primary package manager in Debian based distributions.
To install Zoom, run the following command in the terminal:
sudo dpkg -i zoom_amd64.deb
The installation process might give some errors as seen in the above output. But don’t worry, the errors are due to the fact that dpkg can’t find dependencies required by Zoom.
To fix the dependencies run the below command.
sudo apt install -fAfter installing the dependencies, you should be able to run Zoom from the App Launcher or Activities search menu on your system.
Install Zoom from Zoom Download Center
To get the Zoom installer on your Ubuntu machine, head over to zoom.us/download to open the Zoom Download Center page for Linux.
Then, select your Linux distro from the drop-down menu next to ‘Linux type’ on the download center page. It’ll be Ubuntu in this case.
After selecting Ubuntu type, go on to select your OS Architecture and OS Version. Then, finally hit the ‘Download’ button.
After downloading the .deb package, go to the Downloads folder on your Ubuntu machine and double-click on the zoom_amd64.deb file to install Zoom.
Install Zoom via Snap Command
Zoom despite being a proprietary application can be found in the Snapcraft store. Snapcraft is a place where proprietary software deb files are repacked to be easily installed from the command-line.
Note: The Zoom app on Snapcraft isn’t officially provided by Zoom. It’s a third-party developer who repacked and published the official Zoom app on Snapcraft.
To install Zoom using snap command, run:
snap install zoom-clientIf an authentication window will shows up, enter your password and press the ‘Authenticate’ button.
Alternatively, you can also use the Ubuntu Software Center to install Zoom if you prefer to use GUI. Open the Ubuntu Software Center and search and install Zoom from there.
We have seen how to install Zoom using deb package and by snap. We recommend that you download and install Zoom from the official Zoom server only. Use either the first method where we download and install the Zoom client from the command by downloading it directly from Zoom’s server, or you can also go to the Zoom Download Center and download and install the Zoom client.
Use the snap package at your own risk, since it’s not officially repacked by Zoom into the Snapcraft library.
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