Cursor Linux Installer

Cursor is an excellent AI-powered code editor, but it doesn't treat Linux as a first-class citizen. Unlike macOS and Windows, which have distribution-specific installers, Linux users are left with an AppImage that doesn't integrate well with the system. This means no cursor or code commands in your terminal, making it less convenient to use.

This repository aims to solve that problem by providing a set of shell scripts that will:

1. Download and install Cursor for you
2. Provide a cursor-installer command that you can run from your shell
3. Allow you to easily update Cursor when new versions are released

Installation

There are two ways to install, depending on whether you want to run from the GitHub one-liner or from a locally cloned repository.

Method 1: One‑liner (curl)

# Install stable version (default, AppImage mode)
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/watzon/cursor-linux-installer/main/install.sh | bash

# Install latest version
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/watzon/cursor-linux-installer/main/install.sh | bash -s -- latest

# Install in extracted mode (no FUSE required)
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/watzon/cursor-linux-installer/main/install.sh | bash -s -- stable --extract

Method 1: One‑liner (wget)

# Install stable version (default, AppImage mode)
wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/watzon/cursor-linux-installer/main/install.sh | bash

# Install latest version
wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/watzon/cursor-linux-installer/main/install.sh | bash -s -- latest

# Install in extracted mode (no FUSE required)
wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/watzon/cursor-linux-installer/main/install.sh | bash -s -- stable --extract

The one‑liner script will:

1. Download the cursor.sh script and save it as cursor-installer in ~/.local/bin/
2. Download lib.sh to ~/.local/share/cursor-installer/lib.sh
3. Make the script executable
4. Download and install the latest version of Cursor

Note: If you're installing via the piped bash method and don't have FUSE2 installed, the script will warn you but continue. You'll need to either:

• Install FUSE2 manually: sudo apt-get install libfuse2 (Debian/Ubuntu), sudo dnf install fuse (Fedora), or sudo pacman -S fuse2 (Arch)
• Use extracted mode: curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/watzon/cursor-linux-installer/main/install.sh | bash -s -- stable --extract

Method 2: Local clone

git clone https://github.com/watzon/cursor-linux-installer.git
cd cursor-linux-installer

# AppImage mode (default)
./install.sh stable

# Latest release
./install.sh latest

# Extracted, no-FUSE mode
./install.sh latest --extract

When you run ./install.sh from the repo, it uses the local cursor.sh and lib.sh instead of downloading from GitHub.

Maintainers: Switching between personal and canonical repos

This fork uses a personal branch for development and the upstream repo for canonical links. The installer supports environment overrides so you can test personal builds without modifying repo defaults:

# (Optional) Personal testing without editing repo defaults
export REPO_OWNER="ZanzyTHEbar"
export REPO_BRANCH="personal"
./install.sh latest

CI or release scripts can set these env vars to ensure links point to the canonical repo in artifacts and docs.

Branch protection and automation

This repository enforces that main always points to the canonical upstream (watzon/cursor-linux-installer).

• A GitHub Action (.github/workflows/enforce-canonical.yml) runs on pushes and PRs to main and fails if:
  • Any personal links like ZanzyTHEbar/cursor-linux-installer/personal are present in tracked files.
  • install.sh defaults are not REPO_OWNER=watzon and REPO_BRANCH=main.

Maintainer workflow:

1. Develop on personal branch.

2. Merge to main in your fork.

3. Canonical defaults are used automatically (watzon/main). For personal testing, use the env overrides shown above.

4. Enable local git hook to prevent pushing non-canonical links to main:

   git config core.hooksPath .githooks
   chmod +x .githooks/pre-push

5. Open PR to upstream. CI will verify canonical links.

Uninstalling

To uninstall the Cursor Linux Installer, you can run the uninstall script:

bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/watzon/cursor-linux-installer/main/uninstall.sh)"

or

bash -c "$(wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/watzon/cursor-linux-installer/main/uninstall.sh)"

The uninstall script will:

1. Remove the cursor-installer script from ~/.local/bin/
2. Remove the shared lib.sh from ~/.local/share/cursor-installer/
3. Remove the Cursor AppImage
4. Ask if you want to remove the Cursor configuration files

Usage

Note: The installer CLI is cursor-installer to avoid conflicts with Cursor's official cursor CLI.

After installation, you can use the cursor-installer command to launch Cursor or update it:

• To launch Cursor: cursor-installer
• To update Cursor: cursor-installer --update [options]
  • Update to stable version: cursor-installer --update or cursor-installer --update stable
  • Update to latest version: cursor-installer --update latest
  • Additional arguments can be passed after --update to control the update behavior
• To check available versions: cursor-installer --check or cursor-installer -c
• To check Cursor version: cursor-installer --version or cursor-installer -v
  • Shows the installed version of Cursor if available
  • Returns an error if Cursor is not installed or version cannot be determined

Installation Modes

The installer supports two installation modes:

AppImage Mode (Default)

The default mode installs Cursor as an AppImage. This requires FUSE2 to be installed on your system.

Requirements:

• FUSE2 (automatically installed by the script on Debian/Ubuntu, Fedora, and Arch)

Advantages:

• Smaller disk footprint
• Standard AppImage format

Usage:

cursor-installer --update stable

Extracted Mode (FUSE-Free)

This mode fully extracts the AppImage and installs Cursor as a native application, eliminating the need for FUSE. This is ideal for:

• Systems without FUSE support
• Restricted environments (containers, some cloud instances)
• Users who prefer traditional installations

Advantages:

• No FUSE dependency
• Works in restricted environments
• Native application structure
• Potentially better compatibility

Usage:

# Install in extracted mode
cursor-installer --extract

# Update in extracted mode
cursor-installer --extract --update stable

# Set as default via environment variable
export CURSOR_INSTALL_MODE=extracted
cursor-installer --update stable

Note: The extracted installation is stored in ~/.local/share/cursor/.

Note

If you encounter a warning that ~/.local/bin is not in your PATH, you can add it by running:

export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"

or add it to your shell profile (e.g., .bashrc, .zshrc, etc.):

echo "export PATH=\"\$HOME/.local/bin:\$PATH\"" >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

License

This software is released under the MIT License.

Contributing

If you find a bug or have a feature request, please open an issue on GitHub.

If you want to contribute to the project, please fork the repository and submit a pull request.