for anyone that's gone through this ? it's a pita. you download what you think is the correct .deb for Ubuntu/Mint etc, in my case Mint and you get libglib2.0 messages and it won't install.

This website explains it and here's the link, but i'll take out everything from the article in case that website disappears. https://linuxiac.com/how-to-install-vs-code-on-linux-mint/

I remember having to do this many years ago. And my Mint install, i upgraded over the years and all was good. Until i upgraded to 22. The upgrade wasn't good on my Ryzen beast and my old i5. My i5 now runs Fedora 40 coz i don't want all my eggs in one basket, so to speak, given the disaster of Mint 22 using the mintupgrade tool.

from the link above ? Install pre-reqs

sudo apt install software-properties-common apt-transport-https wget gpg

Import Miscosofts GPG Key:

wget -qO- https://packages.microsoft.com/keys/microsoft.asc | gpg --dearmor > packages.microsoft.gpg

sudo install -D -o root -g root -m 644 packages.microsoft.gpg /etc/apt/keyrings/packages.microsoft.gpg

Those commands won't produce any output.

Given we're talking Ubuntu based Linuxes? Import Microsofts Repo

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb [arch=amd64,arm64,armhf signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/packages.microsoft.gpg] https://packages.microsoft.com/repos/code stable main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/vscode.list'

Again, no output, no harm running it twice.

Now, given you've added a new repo to the sources.list.d you need to update your cache. Two ways, from the link above:

sudo apt update

and also the same command but

sudo apt-get update

both do the same thing.

Now all you need to do is install it. either

sudo apt install code

or

sudo apt-get install code

and voila you now have VS Code which will be under the Programming menu item. Note: you can drag that icon (launcher) to the Linux panel so it will be a simple click away to launch it.

Why the official Microsoft .deb file doesn't do all this for us ? I have NFI. Ask them. cheers