Of course you can install Zoom on Ubuntu 20.04, here is how

Sometimes people who have never used Ubuntu or Linux say the strangest things. This weekend for example during a casual discussion about computers one “expert” who clearly hates Linux had some pretty bizarre points to justify his stance. Things like it don’t have a GUI desktop and therefore it’s difficult to use. He also claimed you cannot install or use Zoom on Ubuntu with a triumphant smirk on his face.

That is not true. Of course, Linux doesn’t have a desktop. It has several desktop environments and you are free to choose the one you want. You can even install several of them, customise them to look like anything including Mac or Windows. There is even a guide on how to make your desktop environment look like XP in this day and age.

Here is how you can install and use ZOOM on Ubuntu 20.04

As for ZOOM you can use install and use it on Ubuntu Linux. It’s no harder than it is on Windows. In fact, I would argue that it’s even easier to install and use ZOOM on Ubuntu than it is on Windows but you already know that I am a hopelessly biased Ubuntu Linux user who has been doing this for over a decade.

Here are the steps to install ZOOM:

• Go to the ZOOM download page
• The ZOOM download page will automatically see you are using Linux and ask you to choose which Linux distro you are using
• Select Ubuntu from the drop down
• Download the ZOOM deb file
• Once the file has finished downloading go to the downloads folder
• Right click on the file and select open with software install
• Click install
• Once the installation is complete, press the Windows key and type ZOOM
• Launch and use ZOOM like you do on Windows or Android

N.B That’s all there is to it. Now this being Ubuntu i.e. Linux there are several other ways you could do it too. For example.

• Open a terminal
• Run the command wget https://zoom.us/client/latest/zoom_amd64.deb – o /tmp
• cd tmp
• sudo dpkg -i zoom_amd64.deb
• If you get dependency errors you can fix this by using the command sudo apt install -f. Ubuntu will hunt down the missing packages and install them for you before compeleting the ZOOM install.

In fact, we could chain all these commands using && and just paste them to the terminal and be done with it. That’s why you see a lot of people preferring to use the terminal in Ubuntu or any other version of Linux. When you know what you are doing it’s much much easier than using GUI for some but not all tasks.

P.S If you feel like you don’t need ZOOM anymore you can always fire up a terminal and type sudo apt purge zoom. That will get rid of it completely you won’t have some weird keys dangling in your registry because there is no registry there is the /etc/ folder with plain text configuration files instead of incomprehensible keys and DWORDS. If you don’t know what a DWORD is and you have been using a Windows PC for years-shame on you!

You should also read

• Here’s how you can improve your audio quality on Zoom
• There is currently no way to run iTunes 12 on Ubuntu Linux
• How to download and add Google fonts to your Ubuntu desktop
• How to make your Ubuntu Desktop look like Windows 11