Installing & Setting up Flutter on Linux from Source

This guide provides step-by-step instructions to install and set up Flutter on Linux from source. It is primarily targeted at Debian-based distributions but should work for the majority of them.

Update your system by running the following command:

sudo apt update

Install the necessary packages using the command:

sudo apt install curl file git unzip xz-utils zip libglu1-mesa clang cmake \ ninja-build pkg-config libgtk-3-dev

Optionally, you can choose to install cmake and ninja-build from source. This step is not recommended but provided for advanced users. You can download cmake from here and ninja-build from here. Note that installing cmake is required to install ninja-build or Python.

Create a new folder for Flutter by running the following command:

mkdir projectfolder

Download the latest Flutter SDK tarball file

Installation

Change into the project folder you created earlier:

cd projectfolder

Extract the Flutter tarball file using the command:

tar xvf ~/Downloads/flutter_linux_*-stable.tar.xz

Add Flutter to your environment PATH by executing the following command:

export PATH="$PATH:[path-to-flutter-directory]/bin"

Optionally, you can add the PATH by opening the .bashrc file using the command:

nano ~/.bashrc

Add the PATH configuration there.

Replace [path-to-flutter-directory] in the above command with the actual path to the folder where you extracted the Flutter SDK. For example, if you extracted Flutter in a folder called projectfolder, the command will be:

export PATH="$PATH:~/projectfolder/flutter/bin"

Save the file by pressing Ctrl+O and then Ctrl+X.

Reload Terminal Session

Reload your terminal session by either reopening the terminal or running the following command:

/bin/bash

Check if the Flutter PATH is correctly added to your shell by running:

echo $PATH

Once you have confirmed that Flutter is installed and the PATH is set, run the following command to check the Flutter version:

flutter --version

You should see a welcome screen along with the installed version of Flutter.

flutter