Install Go and Rust on Linux

Go and Rust are both available through their official upstream toolchains—and that is where you should get them. Distro packages lag behind significantly; Go 1.21 shipped in Ubuntu 24.04 while upstream was already at 1.22, and Rust in most repos is months behind stable. This guide uses the canonical install methods: the official Go tarball and rustup for Rust. Both install to your home directory by default, keep your system packages untouched, and let you run multiple versions side by side.

Install Go

1. Download the official tarball

Check go.dev/dl for the latest stable release. At time of writing that is Go 1.22.x. Replace the version string below as needed.

curl -LO https://go.dev/dl/go1.22.4.linux-amd64.tar.gz

Verify the SHA-256 checksum shown on the download page:

sha256sum go1.22.4.linux-amd64.tar.gz

2. Extract to /usr/local

The Go documentation recommends /usr/local/go. Remove any previous installation first to avoid stale files mixing with the new release.

sudo rm -rf /usr/local/go
sudo tar -C /usr/local -xzf go1.22.4.linux-amd64.tar.gz

3. Add Go to your PATH

Add these two lines to ~/.profile (login shells) or ~/.bashrc / ~/.zshrc depending on your shell and preference. GOPATH is where your own modules and binaries land; $GOPATH/bin makes installed tools reachable.

export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/go/bin
export GOPATH=$HOME/go
export PATH=$PATH:$GOPATH/bin

Reload without logging out:

source ~/.bashrc

4. Verify the installation

go version

Expected output (version will vary):

go version go1.22.4 linux/amd64

Managing Multiple Go Versions

The Go toolchain supports installing secondary versions as modules. Once your primary go binary is in PATH, install any other version like this:

go install golang.org/dl/go1.21.11@latest
go1.21.11 download

This places a go1.21.11 wrapper in $GOPATH/bin. Call it explicitly when you need the older toolchain. Your default go command is unchanged.

go1.21.11 version

To remove a secondary version, delete its wrapper from $GOPATH/bin and its SDK cache from ~/sdk/go1.21.11.

Install Rust with rustup

1. Install rustup

rustup is the official Rust toolchain manager. It handles the compiler, standard library, cargo, and cross-compilation targets. Do not use distro Rust packages for development work.

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

The installer is interactive. For a standard setup, accept the default option 1 (Proceed with installation). It installs to ~/.rustup (toolchains) and ~/.cargo (binaries and registry cache).

Note: If you are uncomfortable piping to sh, download the script first, inspect it, then run it:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs -o rustup-init.sh
less rustup-init.sh
bash rustup-init.sh

2. Source the environment

The installer appends a source line to your shell rc file automatically. For the current session:

source "$HOME/.cargo/env"

Future shells will pick this up automatically. If you use a non-standard shell or a minimal dotfile setup, add this line yourself to your rc file.

3. Verify Rust and Cargo

rustc --version
cargo --version

Expected output (version will vary):

rustc 1.78.0 (9b00956e5 2024-04-29)
cargo 1.78.0 (54d8815d0 2024-03-26)

Managing Multiple Rust Toolchains

rustup makes parallel toolchains trivial. The three main channels are stable, beta, and nightly.

Install additional toolchains

rustup toolchain install nightly
rustup toolchain install beta

List installed toolchains

rustup toolchain list

Switch the global default

rustup default stable

Use a specific toolchain for one project

Inside a project directory, create a rust-toolchain.toml file or use the + override syntax:

rustup override set nightly

Or call a toolchain explicitly without changing the project default:

cargo +nightly build

Update all toolchains

rustup update

Required Build Dependencies

Both toolchains need a C linker. Without one, Rust compilation fails immediately and some CGo packages in Go will not build.

Debian / Ubuntu:

sudo apt install build-essential

Fedora / RHEL / Rocky:

sudo dnf groupinstall "Development Tools"

Arch:

sudo pacman -S base-devel

Keeping Things Updated

Updating Go

Go does not have an auto-updater. When a new release appears, repeat the tarball steps: download, verify the checksum, remove /usr/local/go, and extract the new archive. Your GOPATH projects are unaffected.

Updating Rust

One command updates all installed toolchains and rustup itself:

rustup update

Troubleshooting

go: command not found after installation

Your shell has not loaded the updated PATH. Run source ~/.bashrc or open a new terminal. Confirm with echo $PATH that /usr/local/go/bin is present. If you added the export to ~/.profile only, note that many desktop sessions do not source it—prefer ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc.

rustc: command not found after rustup install

The installer adds source "$HOME/.cargo/env" to ~/.bashrc and ~/.profile. Open a new terminal or run source "$HOME/.cargo/env" manually. If you use fish, rustup does not write fish syntax automatically—add fish_add_path ~/.cargo/bin to your config.fish.

Rust linker error: linker 'cc' not found

Install build-essential (Debian/Ubuntu), gcc (Fedora), or base-devel (Arch) as shown in the build dependencies section above.

Permission denied writing to /usr/local

The Go tarball extraction requires sudo because /usr/local is root-owned. If you prefer a user-space installation, extract to $HOME/go-sdk/go1.22.4 instead and adjust the PATH export accordingly. rustup never needs sudo; everything goes under $HOME.