Installing Emacs on GNU/Linux

Check if your distribution already provides an Emacs version of interest to you.

For a more recent build, try installing GNU Guix, Distrobox, building from source or one of the following unofficial repositories for your distribution.

Debian

Emacs 29.4 (on bookworm-backports)

# As root (doas, sudo or su)
apt install emacs

Emacs 28.2 (on Debian Bookworm)

Debian bookworm is (as of 2024-10-08) Debian stable, released on 2023-06-10.

# As root (doas, sudo or su)
apt install emacs

Ubuntu

Emacs 29.3 on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Noble Numbat)

# As root (doas, sudo or su)
apt-get install emacs

Emacs Daily

First read the disclaimer on the Ubuntu Emacs Lisp PPA description

# As root (doas, sudo or su)
apt-add-repository ppa:ubuntu-elisp/ppa
apt-get install emacs-snapshot emacs-snapshot-el

Gentoo

See GNU Emacs - Gentoo wiki and Project:GNU Emacs/Developer guide - Gentoo wiki.

Arch Linux

Emacs 29.4

# As root (doas, sudo or su)
pacman -S emacs

Emacs-git

Compile and Install bleeding edge using AUR:

$ yaourt -S emacs-git

Slackware

Compile and Install using emacs.SlackBuild (unofficial).

Fedora

Emacs 29.4

Available since at least Fedora 39.

# As root (with doas, sudo or su)
dnf install emacs

openSUSE

Emacs 27.2 (openSUSE Leap 15.6)

# As root (with doas, sudo or su)
zypper install emacs

Emacs 29.4 (openSUSE Tumbleweed)

Recent Emacs is available on openSUSE Tumbleweed (tested rolling release distribution) and possibly also on openSUSE Leap from Factory repo.

# As root (with doas, sudo or su)
zypper install emacs