Install Bluefish On Linux: Ubuntu, CentOS, Fedora, Debian, RHEL, openSUSE, Arch Linux, etc.

Bluefish is a lightweight yet compelling code editor used primarily for web development and programming. Despite being an open-source project, it has a rich legacy spanning two decades and is regularly updated and supported by a vibrant online community. As such, the app is feature-rich and easy to use on Linux devices. The app supports other platforms like Windows and macOS and can run on a number of Linux distributions. Thus, the following guide is meant for those readers who want to install Bluefish on Linux. 

What Is Bluefish?

As mentioned above, Bluefish is a text editor primarily focused on web development and editing codes. Developers and programmers can use Bluefish to write websites, scripts, and any number of computer programs. The app also supports various programming and markup languages. As an open-source project, the software is completely free to use and can run on a number of devices. 

However, note that Bluefish is not a WYSIWYG text editor, thus allowing you to fully control the codes you write or edit. For this, you can use a number of features available and rely on the user-friendly UI of the app. You can easily insert markup and codes, add dialogs, create predefined menus, highlight syntax, and perform deep searches, if needed, within the editor. All this makes Bluefish a versatile and powerful tool fit for web development use. 

Features

We have also included a list of features for our reader to better understand what Bluefish has to offer:

• Simple, unchanging text editor.
• You can open 500+ documents simultaneously, making it very good for large projects.
• Perl compatible expressions to support customizable syntax highlighting.
• Subpatterns available for the following:
  • C
  • Changelog
  • CSS
  • CFML
  • HTML
  • JAVA
  • JScript
  • Gettext po
  • Octave
  • Pascal
  • Perl
  • PHP
  • Shell
  • R
  • Python
  • Ruby
  • SQL
  • XML
  • Tcl
• You get an anti-aliased text window
• It supports multiple encodings and easy conversions
• Dialogs are also available for several HTML tags, including attributes
• Highly customizable toolbar
• Image inserts
• Thumbnail creation
• Auto-linking to thumbnails
• Custom menus and Bookmarks
• In-depth search and replace functionality with support for POSIX and Perl-compatible expressions and sub-patterns
• Spell Checking and translations
• Function reference available for Apache, DHTML, DocBook, PHP, SQL, HTML, and GTK.

How To Install Bluefish On Linux Distros?

Bluefish is very easy to install. It is already available with several package managers. Thus, all you need to do is use the package managers and install it. You can even build it from the source file. All such methods are listed below:

Method 1. Install Bluefish On Linux Via The Native Package Repositories

Bluefish is available on most Linux distributions, and you can easily install it via the package repositories. All you have to do is ensure your package managers are up-to-date and then use the following commands to install the app directly from your native distribution repository:

Debian/Ubuntu

sudo apt update
sudo apt install bluefish

Fedora

sudo dnf update
sudo dnf install bluefish

RHEL/CentOS

sudo yum update
sudo yum install bluefish

Arch Linux

sudo pacman -Syu
sudo pacman -S bluefish

Using YAY

sudo pacman -S yay
yay -S blufish

OpenSUSE

sudo zypper refresh
sudo zypper install bluefish

OpenBSD

doas pkg_add bluefish

FreeBSD

sudo pkg install bluefish

Using Ports:

cd /usr/ports/www/bluefish
sudo make install clean

Gentoo

sudo emerge --ask app-editors/bluefish

NixOS

nix-env -iA nixpkgs.bluefish

Linux Mint

sudo apt update
sudo apt install bluefish

Alt Linux

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install bluefish

Void Linux

sudo xbps-install -S
sudo xbps-install bluefish

Alpine Linux

sudo apk add bluefish

Solus

sudo eopkg update-repo
sudo eopkg install bluefish

Slackware

Step 1. First, download the tar package from pkgs.org:

Step 2. Then, run the following command to unpack and install Bluefish:

sudo installpkg bluefish-x.x.x.tgz

Method 2. Install Bluefish Using Flatpak

Step 1. Start by installing Flatpak:

sudo apt install flatpak

Step 2. Then, add the Flathub repo. You will need it to fetch Bluefish:

flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

Step 3. Finally, use Flathub to install Bluefish:

flatpak install flathub nl.openoffice.bluefish

Method 3. Installing Bluefish Via Snap

Step 1. First, install Snap on your system:

sudo apt install snapd

Step 2. Then, install Bluefish using Snap:

sudo snap install bluefish

Method 4. Use AppImage To Install Bluefish On Linux

Step 1. Get the latest Bluefish AppImage by using the following command:

wget https://github.com/AppImage/appimage.github.io/releases/download/latest/Bluefish-x86_64.AppImage

Step 2. Now, make the file executable:

chmod +x Bluefish-x86_64.AppImage

Step 3. Finally, run Bluefish to check:

./Bluefish-x86_64.AppImage

Method 5. Compile Bluefish From Source Tarball

Build Requirements

• C compiler
• gnu make

Dependencies

• gtk+ 2 or 3 (libgtk2.0-dev or libgtk2-devel, or libgtk-3-dev)
• libxml2 (libxml2-dev or libxml2-devel)
• libenchant + development files
• libgucharmap 
• python 

Step 1. First, you need to install the dependencies:

On Debian/Ubuntu

apt install  automake autoconf make libtool intltool libgtk-3-dev libxml2-dev libenchant-2-dev libgucharmap-2-90-dev python3-dev

Or,

apt install automake autoconf make libtool autopoint libgtk-3-dev libxml2-dev libenchant-2-dev libgucharmap-2-90-dev python3-dev

For Fedora

dnf install automake autoconf libtool gtk3-devel enchant2-devel libxml2-devel gucharmap-devel python3-devel gettext-devel

Step 2. Now, get the latest file from the official server:

Step 3. Then, start to unpack the files:

If you downloaded a G-zipped file, use:

tar -xzf bluefish-2.2.xxxx.tar.gz

For B-zipped files, use:

tar -xjf bluefish-2.2.xxxx.tar.bz2

Step 4. After that, locate the download directory:

cd bluefish-2.2.xxxx

Step 5. Run ./configure to initiate the process:

./configure

Step 6. Now, compile and install:

make
sudo make install

Method 6. Compile Bluefish From Subversion

All you have to do is ensure you have installed all the dependencies correctly. After that, you can compile and install Bluefish with just a simple command:

svn checkout https://svn.code.sf.net/p/bluefish/code/trunk bluefish-code
cd bluefish-code/bluefish
./autogen.sh
./configure
make
sudo make install