How to Install Zoom on Ubuntu 20.04

Even if you don’t work from home, you’ve probably heard of Zoom. In light of the coronavirus crisis, the videoconferencing app has become the standard for connecting with others face-to-face virtually in both business and personal settings.

Zoom is now the video communication platform of choice for federal governments, tech startups, religious communities, banks, schools, universities, and government agencies around the world, by the UK Parliament, by healthcare professionals for telemedicine, barbershops, and ceremonies such as birthday parties, funeral services, and Bar and Bat Mitzvah services and of course regular people looking to chat and even party with their friends and family.

What Is Zoom?

Zoom is a cloud-based video communications app that allows you to set up virtual video conferencing meetings and audio conferencing, webinars, meeting recordings, live chats, screen-sharing, and other collaborative capabilities.

You don’t need an account to attend a Zoom meeting, and the app is available on all major desktop and mobile operating systems including Microsoft Windows, Linux, Mac, iOS, and Android, meaning nearly anyone can access it.

Zoom video conferencing is celebrated for its ease of use, high quality video and audio, and collaboration facilities and the basic version is also completely free of charge. Zoom is available free of charge to anyone and the basic free version offers all the facilities most people will need.

The free plan allows up to 100 concurrent participants with a 40-minute time restriction.

Users have the option to upgrade by subscribing to a paid plan. The highest plan supports up to 1,000 concurrent participants for meetings lasting up to 30 hours.

Key Features of Zoom

• Presenters can share their whole desktop or individual applications.
• Allows collaboration with up to 300 UR and external non-UR individuals, including chat, annotation, whiteboarding, and breakout rooms.
• Primary camera view will automatically toggle to the active speaker.
• Record meetings locally and upload to Blackboard Learn, Box, OneDrive Video, or Youtube.
• Browser, client, and plugin scheduling options, including delegation for co-hosts and schedulers.
• Feature-rich mobile apps for iOS and Android.
• Zoom sessions can be expanded to allow larger groups, up to 500 interactive participants in Large Rooms or 10,000 viewers via Zoom Webinars.

Zoom Stats:

• The Zoom mobile app was downloaded 485 million times in 2020.
• The number of annual meeting minutes on Zoom is now over 3.3 trillion.
• Zoom has 467,100 business customers.
• 45 billion minutes of webinars are hosted on Zoom every year.

3.3 trillion meeting minutes are hosted on Zoom each year. That’s an increase of 65% from the 2 trillion meeting minutes logged in the previous quarter.

Compared with the same quarter of the previous year, annual Zoom meeting minutes have increased by 3300% in Q3 FY 2021.

This article explains two methods of installing Zoom Application on Ubuntu 20.04.

Choose the installation method that is most appropriate for your environment.

Method 1: Installing Zoom as a Snap Package

The easiest way to install Zoom on Ubuntu 20.04 is by using the snap packaging system.

A snap package is a type of universal Linux package that you can enjoy irrespective of the distro. Its an self-contained software packages that include the binary all dependencies needed to run the application.

All you need is the snap service pre-configured, In the case of Ubuntu 20.04, it comes with snap pre-installed.

If snapd package is not already installed then you can install it by running following command.

$ sudo apt install snapd

Note: Snap packages can be installed from either the command-line or via the Ubuntu Software application.

This is actually the Snap version of the Zoom. It can be used on any Linux distribution that has Snap support.

Open your terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and type the following command to install the Zoom package.

$ sudo snap install zoom-client

That’s It. Now you can open the Zoom application with the help of Activities search bar.

If you are not comfortable with the command line, open Ubuntu Software, search for “zoom” and install the application.

Type the following command to update the zoom application.

$ sudo snap refresh --list

Method 2: Install Zoom using deb package

Zoom is not an open-source application, and it is not included in the Ubuntu repositories. We’ll install Zoom from their APT repositories.

Step #1

Download the Zoom .deb package file using wget command as follows.

$ wget https://zoom.us/client/latest/zoom_amd64.deb

Step #2

Once downloaded, type the following command to install the .deb package.

$ sudo apt install ./zoom_amd64.deb

That’s it. Zoom has been installed, and you can start using it. Later, when a new version is released, to update Zoom, repeat the same steps.

Starting Zoom

Zoom can be launched from the command line by typing zoom or by clicking on the Zoom icon (Applications -> Internet -> zoom).

When you start the Zoom application for the first time, a window like the following will appear.

If you are new to this application then create an account or enter valid credentials to login.

Zoom user interface:

How to Uninstall Zoom from Ubuntu 20.04

For some reason, If you want to uninstall Zoom application, refer following steps.

If you have installed Zoom via Snap type the following command:

$ sudo snap remove zoom-client

If you have installed the appication using apt then uninstall by running the below command:

$ sudo apt remove zoom

You can also run the following command to remove zoom application.

$ sudo apt autoremove zoom --purge

Conclusion

I hope that now you have a good understanding of How to Install Zoom on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa.

If anyone does have any questions about what we covered in this guide then feel free to ask in the comment section below and I will do my best to answer those.