Arduino IDE from Ubuntu's repos are usually outdated. There are several ways to install the latest Arduino IDE: with umake, from arduino.cc tar.gz, as a snap or flatpak. In all cases you may need to add your user to dialout group (if it doesn't work, add it also to tty group):

sudo adduser $USER dialout

Install using flatpak package

flatpak install flathub cc.arduino.IDE2  # cc.arduino.arduinoide for v1.x

Install using Ubuntu Make (on GitHub)

Ubuntu Make is a command line tool which allows you to download the latest version of popular developer tools on your installation

1. Install Ubuntu Make

   
   

    sudo apt install ubuntu-make
   
   

   
   

   If not using Ubuntu 18.04+ or want the latest versions:

   
   

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

   
   

2. Install Arduino IDE with umake

   
   

    umake electronics arduino
   
   

   
   

_{Warning: umake ide arduino is deprecated.}

This will install it on ~/.local/share/umake/electronics/arduino. If you don't get the shortcut available you'll need to run install.sh found there.

Some other software options (like Eagle or Sublime) are not free software. I recommend instead Fritzing and VSCodium (a community-driven, freely-licensed binary distribution of Microsoft’s editor VS Code).

Install using arduino.cc

Just follow official guide (or Canonical's tutorial):

1. Download the Arduino Software (IDE). lscpu will tell you if 32 or 64 bits. If unsure, use 32 bits.


2. Extract the package (from terminal tar -xvf arduino-1.8.2-linux64.tar.xz).


3. Run the installation script (./install.sh).

Install using snap package

sudo snap install arduino

If you need any other Python 3 dependencies other than serial, you can install them inside the snap sandbox using the arduino.pip command.

Notes

• Before installing you might move the folder with binaries to /opt/ or /usr/local/.


• For ESP8266 see this installation instructions.


• Related question on Arduino StackExchange


• Issues with Arduino IDE v2.x should be sent here.

• You also have

  
  
  
  
  • Arduino Web Editor
  
  
  • PlatformIO IDE, an extension for VSCodium.
  
  
  
  



• With the latest versions come newer features like the "Additional Boards Manager URLs" on Preferences (to add ESP8266 board):