If you're on Windows or macOS, skip to the lesson for your system — this one's Linux-only. (If you set up WSL in the Windows lesson, that's Ubuntu underneath — use the Debian/Ubuntu instructions below, inside your WSL terminal, not this lesson.)

Install the compiler and tools

Open a terminal and run the commands for your distribution.

Ubuntu, Debian, and anything based on them (Mint, Pop!_OS, ...):

sudo apt update
sudo apt install build-essential gdb

Fedora:

sudo dnf install gcc-c++ gdb

Arch, Manjaro:

sudo pacman -S base-devel gdb

sudo runs the command with administrator privileges — it'll ask for your password. If you're not sure which distribution you're running, cat /etc/os-release prints its name.

Confirm it worked

g++ --version

You should see a version number printed. If you get "command not found," the install above didn't complete — check for error messages and try again.

Working with your files

Create a folder for this course:

mkdir ~/cpp-course
cd ~/cpp-course

~ means your home folder. You'll come back here every lesson.

Checkpoint

• Every major Linux distribution has g++ and gdb in its package manager, under slightly different package names.
• g++ --version confirms the install worked.
• Next up: installing VS Code and the C++ extension.