Setting Up Pop!_OS for Front End Development

Jeremy Morgan
codeburst
Published in
5 min readMay 18, 2020

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If you’ve heard all the chatter lately about Pop!_OS and have been wanting to try it out, here’s a good guide to setting up a front end development machine.

If you’re relatively new to Linux and are just trying it out, I suggest building this in a Virtual Machine. I have the full instructions for installing Pop!_OS in a virtual machine here. This is the best way to dip your toes in without significant modifications to your computer.

Moving on, can you set up a front end development machine with Pop!_OS? Absolutely! It’s one of the easiest environments to set up and will provide speed, stability, and great looks along the way. Here’s how to do it.

Get the Basic Tools

You’ll need some basics just to get started with any developer machine. Let’s get some of the core tools installed.

Generally in these tutorials, I suggest installing Git as the first step, but Pop!_OS already has Git installed by default!

Next, install Node, and NPM

sudo apt install nodejs npm

Run the following commands to make sure it installed:

node -v
npm -v

Perfect. Let’s install a quick react app.

npx create-react-app hello world

This will scaffold out a new React application using create-react-app.

cd hello-world
npm start

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Silicon Forest Hacker / Developer. I talk about: Programming, DevOps, Generative AI, and much more. More stuff at JeremyMorgan.com