You can use Ubuntu Make to download and install Visual Studio Code:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-desktop/ubuntu-make

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-make

Then install Visual Studio Code:

umake ide visual-studio-code

Then click on the Visual studio icon that it automatically places on your launcher.

To remove it, delete the installation folder and right click on the launcher to unpin the icon. The installation folder defaults to ~/tools/web/visual-studio-code

References

• http://blog.didrocks.fr/post/Ubuntu-Make-0.7-released-with-Visual-Studio-Code-support


• https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-make

Visual Studio Code enabled official Linux repositories on February 2017 (v1.10)

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys EB3E94ADBE1229CF

sudo add-apt-repository -y "deb [arch=amd64] https://packages.microsoft.com/repos/vscode stable main"

sudo apt -y install code

You can upgrade / dist-upgrade as usual

sudo apt -y upgrade

sudo apt -y dist-upgrade

Now there's a .deb package for Ubuntu and Debian besides the rpm/zip. It is available here and may be installed as usual:

sudo dpkg -i vscode-amd64.deb

Works fine on Xenial. Maybe someone creates a PPA to simplify updates. Or it 'll become part of the official repository.

Update 03/17: Since version 1.10 (February 2017) there is built-in support for official Linux repositories. VS Code now can auto-update on Linux, although you have to install it one time manually.

Since they provide a .deb file now I recommend using that instead of the approach below.

The way I've done it is as follows. Using a terminal:

1. 
   

   Create a directory for the files and change to this directory:

   
   
   

   mkdir msvs && cd msvs
   
   

   
   

The directory name is arbitrary.

2. 
   

   Unpack the zip file in your new folder:

   
   
   

   unzip ../Downloads/VSCode-linux-x64.zip
   
   

   
   


3. 
   

   Run the ide using

   
   
   

   ./VSCode-linux-x64/code &
   
   

   
   

You can also create a desktop link so that you can start it directly from the desktop or double-click in nautilus.

To create a menu entry:

4. 
   

   At the terminal, create a file

   
   
   

   sudo gedit /usr/share/applications/MSVS.desktop
   
   

   
   

and copy and paste the following:

#!/usr/bin/env xdg-open



[Desktop Entry]

Version=1.0

Type=Application

Terminal=false

Exec=/opt/msvs/code

Name=MSVS

Icon=/opt/msvs/flurry_ios_visual_studio_2012_replacement_icon_by_flakshack-d5nnelp.png

Categories=Development

In my case the executable resides inside /opt/msvs.

sudo cp -R ~/Downloads/VSCode-linux-x64 /opt/msvs

I also downloaded an MS icon for this application from

wget http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2012/344/9/1/flurry_ios_visual_studio_2012_replacement_icon_by_flakshack-d5nnelp.png

and moved it to /opt/msvs:

sudo mv flurry*png /opt/msvs

Install the snap.

sudo apt install snapd-xdg-open

sudo snap install vscode --classic

Visual Studio Code doesn't have to be installed, per se. Instead you can unzip the archive wherever you want it, then run the program by double-clicking the file called code (which is the main executable).

Here's a GUI-oriented procedure for doing so:

1. Go to the Visual Studio Code site and click Download Code for Linux. (You should probably also review the license terms and privacy policy.)



2. 
   

   Make a new folder where you want Visual Studio Code to go. It's best to do this within your home folder (if other users want to use Visual Studio Code, it could be extracted separated for them--then any modifications or configuration changes will be per-user).

   
   
   

   This destination folder should be empty, as the .zip archive provided for download does not have everything in a top-level folder inside. For example, if you put software installed for your own user in ~/opt, you could create a new folder inside there called VSCode-linux-x64.

   
   


3. 
   

   Right click the downloaded .zip file and click Extract To..., then select the folder you created.

   
   
   

   If you prefer, or if your file browser doesn't show an Extract To... option, you could instead move the .zip file into the destination folder, right-click the icon, and click Extract Here.

   
   


4. 
   

   To run Visual Studio Code, double-click on the code executable, which is one of the files that was extracted.

   
   
   

   Currently Visual Studio Code is "preview" software, which means it is still being developed and is not yet fully stable. Therefore you might prefer to launch it from a terminal so that you can see possibly useful errors and warnings. To do that, open a Terminal window (Ctrl+Alt+T), cd to the directory where you extracted it, and run ./code.

   
   

• Download the Powerbase installer script for Visual Studio Code



• 
  

  Become root

  
  
  

  sudo -i
  
  

  
  


• 
  

  Change to your download directory (probably ~/Downloads/)

  
  
  

  cd /home/*yourusername*/Downloads/
  
  

  
  


• 
  

  Run the installer script. If there are no errors, it will just exit…

  
  
  

  sh ./vscodeinstaller.sh
  
  

  
  

That’s it. Nothing special about this one and it should work in any Linux distribution. Just open your launcher and start typing Visual Studio Code.

• Install gdebi package installer


• Download .deb VSCode package from here
  


• Install downloaded package using gdebi
  

Installing VS Code on Ubuntu

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

sudo mv microsoft.gpg /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/microsoft.gpg

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb [arch=amd64] https://packages.microsoft.com/repos/vscode stable main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/vscode.list'

This will download the gpg key and copy and make the apt files.
Then you can simply update and install vs code:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install code

• The advantage of this installation method is that you can simple update vscode using the apt-get update command. Works fine and I use vs code with the vim plugin for over 2 years (c, c++, python, md, latex, html, javascript ...).

BTW, VS Code will be a standard package in Ubuntu 18.04 (end of april 2018)!

From Visual Studio Code's official docs:

1. Download the .deb package from this page.


2. Run the following command:
   sudo dpkg -i ~/path-to-file.deb
   


3. If you get dependency errors when using dpkg with a package, run:
   sudo apt-get install -f
   

Note: Installing the .deb package will automatically install the apt repository and signing key to enable auto-updating using the regular system mechanism.

You can use new FLATPAK (flathub) repository to install on any linux distribution https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.visualstudio.code

FLATPAK automaticaly updates installed packages.

I can't comment on the correct answer above (using PPA as of February), so I will add another detail here.

Visual Code depends on libgtk2.0-0 which it does not list as a dependency in the meta data. You might come across this problem if you, like me, setup minimal virtualbox installations just to troubleshoot difficult system level problems where you have to hack and slash packages which you don't want to do on your real host.

On minimal hosts, therefore the following is required in addition to what was mentioned above to get Visual Code to run:

sudo apt install libgtk2.0-0