Install Cursor AI code editor on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS

setup_cursor_ubuntu.md

Install Cursor AI editor on Ubuntu 24.04

1. Use the Download button on www.cursor.com web site. It will download the NAME.AppImage file.

2. Copy the .AppImage file to your Applications directory

cd ~/Downloads
mkdir -p ~/Applications
mv NAME.AppImage ~/Applications/cursor.AppImage

3. Install libfuse2

sudo apt update
sudo apt install libfuse2

4. Make it an executable

chmod +x ~/Applications/cursor.AppImage

5. Run

~/Applications/cursor.AppImage --no-sandbox

6. Add cursor shortcut

Add to .bashrc or .zshrc

alias cursor='~/Applications/your-app.AppImage --no-sandbox'

Cursor app also doesn't seems to start fully in a separate thread and detached from the terminal when starting from the terminal. More over, I also notice sometimes issues with like using grep in the built-in terminal within Cursor.

So I dunno what the hack those Cursor people thinking, but they should just build a deb file and distribute those for the people who just want to have a deb. I know its possible since Windsurf does it correctly.

I would like to have Cursor features with the build & releasing of Windsurf using deb files.

Is it working for Ubuntu 22.04?

Yes!

Thanks! This worked smoothly for me on Ubuntu 22.04.5

the online cursor icon to download should be replaced as : https://www.cursor.com/apple-touch-icon.png

The link in the script is not working for some reason. Anyone else facing the same issue?
NOT WORKING: https://downloader.cursor.sh/linux/appImage/x64

Try this: https://gist.github.com/Bishwas-py/cceb4caecdd072edc3fafdce3d5c12ae?permalink_comment_id=5549404#gistcomment-5549404

Cursor now really really need to just publish a Debian repo sooner than later.

Simply do that

./Cursor-xxxxxx.AppImage --appimage-extract cursor

# Navigate to the source directory
cd cursor/usr

# Copy the contents to the system /usr directory
sudo cp -r bin/* /usr/bin/
sudo cp -r lib/* /usr/lib/
sudo cp -r share/* /usr/share/

# Set the correct ownership and permissions for the Chrome sandbox
sudo chown root:root /usr/share/cursor/chrome-sandbox
sudo chmod 4755 /usr/share/cursor/chrome-sandbox

Just saying.. In my case --appimage-extract doesn't accept the parameter for a directory (cursor in this case). Without cursor extracting works as expected into squashfs-root dir. Thanks!

Improved script from above snippet (for Linux): https://gitlab.melroy.org/-/snippets/621

That being said, it's still NOT ideal.. since normally the executable (eg. vscode or windsurf) goes to background when executing it. My code snippet fixing this again, by using a custom launcher script just like vscode. Basically doing:

ELECTRON="/usr/local/share/cursor/cursor"
CLI="/usr/local/share/cursor/resources/app/out/cli.js"
ELECTRON_RUN_AS_NODE=1 "$ELECTRON" "$CLI" "$@"

Cursor fix your deb files!

So now the only down-side is that an icon is missing Cursor fixed that issue apparently.