VSCodium 1.121.03429
VSCodium provides freely-licensed binary builds of the VS Code source, with Microsoft telemetry, branding, and licensing terms stripped out, for people who want the editor without those parts.
Download TAR.GZ Project website ↗Download Mirrors
VS Code’s source is published under an MIT license, but Microsoft’s official builds add proprietary branding, a marketplace license restricting access to the same-name extension marketplace, and telemetry collection. VSCodium builds the same source with all of that stripped out, targeting Microsoft’s own official extension marketplace substitute (Open VSX) instead.
Why Some Linux Users Prefer It
VSCodium is functionally nearly identical to VS Code, same editor core, same extension API, same settings format, since it’s built from the same upstream source. The differences are entirely about telemetry (disabled by default) and licensing (fully open source, no Microsoft product terms).
Installing on Linux
The tarball is a portable, self-contained build:
tar -xzf VSCodium-linux-x64-1.121.03429.tar.gz
./VSCodium-linux-x64-1.121.03429/bin/codiumNative .deb, .rpm, .AppImage, and Snap packages are also published for each release if a managed install is preferred over the portable tarball.
Extensions
Because VSCodium doesn’t use Microsoft’s marketplace by default, some Microsoft-published extensions (like the official Python and C/C++ extensions with certain proprietary components) may require manual configuration or aren’t available at all through Open VSX. Community documentation on the VSCodium project covers workarounds for the most commonly missed extensions.
Verify Your Download
Checksums are published alongside each release on GitHub.