Monero is a decentralized cryptocurrency that has a primary focus on user privacy. To get started using Monero, The first thing you will need is a Monero Wallet. The Monero Wallet is available on most operating systems, but we focus on Linux systems. You can run a Monero wallet from a Graphical User Interface, or from the command line. It is open source and free to use.

This guide will take you step by step through the instructions of downloading Monero Wallet (both the GUI and CLI versions), verifying the download, and installing the Monero Wallet application on all major Linux distributions.

In this tutorial you will learn:

  • How to download Monero Wallet
  • How to verify the integrity of Monero Wallet download
  • How to install Monero Wallet GUI and CLI version on Linux
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How to install Monero Wallet on Linux (GUI & CLI)

Software Requirements & Linux Command Line Conventions
Category Requirements, Conventions or Software Version Used
System All GNU/Linux Distributions
Software Monero Wallet GUI or CLI
Other Privileged access to your Linux system as root or via the sudo command.
Conventions # – requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of sudo command
$ – requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user

How to install Monero Wallet on Linux (GUI & CLI) step by step instructions

  1. Downloading Monero Wallet

    Start by downloading the latest version of the Monero Wallet application. Navigate to the official Monero download page and grab whichever edition you would like to use – either GUI or command line.

    Downloading the Monero Wallet application from the official site
    Downloading the Monero Wallet application from the official site

  2. Verify the Monero Wallet Download

    Once the download is complete, we will verify the download by checking its GPG signature and SHA256 checksum. First, execute the following wget command in order to download binaryFate’s GPG key, which is used to sign the Monero binary file.

    $ wget -O binaryfate.asc https://raw.githubusercontent.com/monero-project/monero/master/utils/gpg_keys/binaryfate.asc
  3. Verify that the fingerprint of the binaryfate.asc file matches. 
    $ gpg --keyid-format long --with-fingerprint binaryfate.asc

    As long as your fingerprint matches with that below, it is safe to proceed.

    pub   rsa4096/F0AF4D462A0BDF92 2019-12-12 [SCEA]
      Key fingerprint = 81AC 591F E9C4 B65C 5806  AFC3 F0AF 4D46 2A0B DF92
uid                           binaryFate <binaryfate@getmonero.org>
</binaryfate@getmonero.org>
  4. Next, run the following command to import the signing key: 
    $ gpg --import binaryfate.asc
  5. Next, we will download the hashes for Monero Wallet with the following wget command. 
    $ wget -O hashes.txt https://www.getmonero.org/downloads/hashes.txt
  6. Now we will use this command to verify the signature of the hash file: 
    $ gpg --verify hashes.txt

    You should see “Good signature” in your output, indicating that this is the proper hashes file. “Bad signature” indicates a problem and you should not proceed further.

  7. As the last part of verification, check the SHA 256 checksum of your downloaded Monero Wallet archive. 
    $ shasum -a 256 monero-gui-linux-x64-v0.17.3.2.tar.bz2

    Make sure that the returned checksum matches with the one shown in hashes.txt.

  8. Install Monero Wallet

    Now we can move on to installing Monero Wallet. Start by extracting the files from the tarball and changing directories to the installation files.

    $ tar xf monero-gui-linux-x64-v0.17.3.2.tar.bz2
$ cd monero-gui-linux-x64-v0.17.3.2
  9. Launch the Monero Wallet installer, which should already be executable. 
    $ ./monero-wallet-gui
OR
$ ./monero-wallet-cli
  10. You will go through some ordinary installation prompts, at least on the GUI version. These are mostly self explanatory. The first thing you need to do is select your desired mode.
    Select the desired mode during Monero Wallet installation

    If you are using the command line version, you will go straight into making a new wallet or specifying where your current one is located.

    Installing the Monero Wallet command line version
  11. As a final step during installation, you will create a new Monero Wallet or log in to your existing one.
    Either create a new Monero Wallet or log in to your existing one
    Either create a new Monero Wallet or log in to your existing one
  12. During installation, the Monero Wallet shortcut should have been added to your system’s application launcher. In case you want to move your Monero Wallet files to a different location, you can open the following file in nano or your preferred text editor and change where the shortcut should look for the application. 
    $ nano ~/.local/share/applications/monero-gui.desktop
    Editing the Monero Wallet configuration file to set the location for the application
    Editing the Monero Wallet configuration file to set the location for the application

Closing Thoughts

In this tutorial, we saw how to install Monero Wallet on a Linux system. This included both the GUI and command line versions of the application, and these instructions should work across all major Linux distributions. Monero excels in user privacy, and also proves to be very accessible, with clients that cater to a variety of systems.