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 (bookworm)

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

Emacs 29.4 (on bookworm-backports)

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

Emacs 28.2

# As root (su, doas or sudo)
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

Read the disclaimer on the 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

SUSE

Emacs 23

Available in 12.1 and 12.2. Before that? not sure.

$ sudo zypper install emacs

Emacs 24

Not available till 12.2, but available from Factory repo. Add factory repo and then,

$ sudo zypper install emacs

Mandriva

No pre-built packages.