How to Install SQL Developer in Linux?

Last Updated : 12 Apr, 2025

SQL Developer is a client application or a desktop application. We can install it in our local system & can access Oracle Database. Oracle provides it. Oracle has a server component & SQL Developer has a client component. By using SQL developer we can access the Oracle database. SQL Development gives us an integrated development environment. It helps to develop the database & maintain it also. It is like a kind of worksheet for running queries.

Features of SQL Developer

It is easy to download & install.
It gives a free development platform.
It helps to solve data modeling problems easily.
It is a full-featured SQL IDE.
It offers complete end-to-end development of your application.

Prerequisite

You need JDK of a specific version based on a version of SQL Developer Tool, to check which JDK version is required refer to notes which are available next to the download column here (while writing this article latest version 22.2.1 requires JDK 11)
to install JDK refer - How to Install JDK in Linux?

Steps to Install

You can install using two methods

using .rpm file (it does everything for you, but requires specific attention if your Linux doesn't support the rpm package manager ex. Ubuntu)
using source file (the process is the same for every Linux distribution and very useful if you need a custom path to file)

1) using .rpm file

Go to the official Oracle SQL Developer Download page and download the Linux (.rpm) image. (to download you need Oracle Account if you don't have you can create a free account here or go with sign up option while downloading)

Once you have the .rpm file open terminal in the directory containing file, to do the same open files app and navigate to folder you have the file then right-click and select open in terminal, or you can use cd command to navigate to folder in terminal.
Now, if your Linux distribution supports .rpm packages (ex. Oracle Linux, Fedora Linux), run the command sudo rpm -i path/to/file.rpm (in my case sudo rpm -i ./sqldeveloper-22.2.1.234.1810.noarch.rpm), if you have JDK installed in a custom location it will prompt for it, enter path if prompted. Once done installation is completed! Launch it!

But if you are using debian based Linux distribution, we first need to convert rpm package to debian package and for that we will use alien package
here are commands to run in your directory containing .rpm package, read more at How to convert .rpm to .deb

sudo apt update
sudo apt install alien 
alien --to-deb [file_name.rpm]
sudo apt install ./[file_name.deb]

2) using source file

Go to Oracle SQL Developer Download page and download source file. (again you need Oracle account which is free, for more read step 1 in using .rpm package)

extract the zip file by right-click then extract option.
Once file is extracted move it to your preferred location
now to run sqldeveloper just run bash file - sqldeveloper.sh - inside source folder, to do that run bash ./sqldeveloper.sh with terminal open in source file directory