This guide outlines the process of installing Zellij, a Rust-based terminal workspace and multiplexer, on Fedora Linux. While Zellij can typically be installed using Cargo, the Rust package manager, I encountered compilation issues on a fresh Fedora installation. Finding limited documentation for resolving this, I’ve compiled this step-by-step guide to help others.

Table of Contents

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• Installing Rustup
• Dependencies
• Compiling Zellij

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Installing Rustup

The recommended way of installing Rust on Linux is using Rustup. I ran the following command from the [Rust install site].

The recommended way to install Rust on Linux is via Rustup. You can use the following command from the official Rust installation site:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

Choose the recommended settings during the installation process. This will set up Rust quickly and easily.

Dependencies

Trying to install Zellij without installing additional dependencies will result in errors. These are the dependencies I installed before Zellij would compile,

• gcc
• openssl
• rust-openssl-sys-devel
• perl which can all be installed with dnf.

The step which fails without these dependencies is when the Rust compiler tries to build openssl. In order to build openssl Perl is needed, so I suspect that you only need to run

sudo dnf install perl

However, if this does not work, you might want to try and install all the other dependencies. With that in place, you should be able to install Zellij.

Compiling Zellij

With Rust and the necessary dependencies installed, you can compile Zellij using Cargo. Follow the instructions from the official Zellij documentation:

cargo install --locked zellij

If you’ve installed the dependencies mentioned earlier, this command should execute without any errors.