# Merits or demerits of installing methods: official, debian or snap?

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/merits-or-demerits-of-installing-methods-official-debian-or-snap/39000>\
**Category:** New to Julia\
**Tags:** question\
**Created:** [May 8, 2020, 2:19am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/merits-or-demerits-of-installing-methods-official-debian-or-snap/39000 "2020-05-08T02:19:32Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![suiato](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/suiato/32/1713_2.png) [@suiato](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/suiato)\
**Post date:** [May 8, 2020, 2:19am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/merits-or-demerits-of-installing-methods-official-debian-or-snap/39000/1 "2020-05-08T02:19:32Z")

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I’m thinking of installing Julia on Ubuntu 20.04, and wonder which method to use:

1. apt-get install julia
2. snap install julia --classic
3. tar xvzf (downloaded official tgz file)

What are the merits or demerits of each method?  
Eventually, I’ll be interested in having Julia work with Python or C++, and using CPU cores and/or GPU.

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**Author:** ![Oscar\_Smith](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/oscar_smith/32/25343_2.png) [@Oscar\_Smith](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Oscar_Smith)\
**Post date:** [May 8, 2020, 2:36am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/merits-or-demerits-of-installing-methods-official-debian-or-snap/39000/2 "2020-05-08T02:36:44Z")

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Don’t use apt. Julia is a relatively young, and thus quickly changing language. If you use apt, you will get the version of Julia that was released at the same time as your OS. This means that in a year, Julia will be on version 1.8 or so, but apt will still have 1.4. I’m not sure if snap is better, but for now, at least, I would recommend the official tgz file.

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**Author:** ![tim.holy](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/tim.holy/32/52_2.png) [@tim.holy](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/tim.holy)\
**Post date:** [May 8, 2020, 2:57am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/merits-or-demerits-of-installing-methods-official-debian-or-snap/39000/3 "2020-05-08T02:57:03Z")

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There’s also a regular stream of reported bugs (some quite serious) that only affect the `apt`-installed version, even when the version of Julia seems otherwise identical. I love `apt`, but I would never use it to install Julia.

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**Author:** ![suiato](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/suiato/32/1713_2.png) [@suiato](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/suiato)\
**Post date:** [May 8, 2020, 3:15am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/merits-or-demerits-of-installing-methods-official-debian-or-snap/39000/4 "2020-05-08T03:15:46Z")

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Thanks for the quick responses 😃  
I’ll use the official binary.

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**Author:** ![Tamas\_Papp](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/tamas_papp/32/25949_2.png) [@Tamas\_Papp](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Tamas_Papp)\
**Post date:** [May 8, 2020, 6:09am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/merits-or-demerits-of-installing-methods-official-debian-or-snap/39000/5 "2020-05-08T06:09:37Z")

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4th option: clone the source from the git repo and type `make`.

Advantages: will be very easy to upgrade, try feature branches, test release candidates.

Disadvantages: takes a few minutes to compile.