How to Install Golang 1.8.3 on CentOS 7, Ubuntu 16.04, and Debian 9

Golang is a programming language developed by Google. Thanks to its versatility, simplicity and reliability, Golang has become one of the most popular programming languages in the open source community.

In this article, I will show you how to install the latest stable release of Golang on 64-bit and 32-bit Linux operating systems, including CentOS 7, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, and Debian 9 Stretch. At the time I wrote this article, the latest stable release of Golang was Golang 1.8.3.

Prerequisites

• A Vultr CentOS 7, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, or Debian 9 Stretch linux server instance.
• A sudo user.

Step 1: Download and decompress the Golang 1.8.3 archive

For 64-bit Linux operating systems

If you are using a 64-bit Linux operating system, including CentOS 7 x64, Ubuntu 16.04 amd64, and Debian 9 amd64, you need to download the 64-bit version of Golang as below:

cd
wget https://storage.googleapis.com/golang/go1.8.3.linux-amd64.tar.gz
sudo tar -zxvf go1.8.3.linux-amd64.tar.gz -C /usr/local

For 32-bit Linux operating systems

If you are using a 32-bit Linux operating system, including Ubuntu 16.04 i386 and Debian 9 i386, you need to download the 32-bit version of Golang as below:

cd
wget https://storage.googleapis.com/golang/go1.8.3.linux-386.tar.gz
sudo tar -zxvf go1.8.3.linux-386.tar.gz -C /usr/local

Note: You can always find the download link to the latest release of Golang on the official download page.

Step 2: Setup GOROOT and PATH environment variables:

echo 'export GOROOT=/usr/local/go' | sudo tee -a /etc/profile
echo 'export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/go/bin' | sudo tee -a /etc/profile
source /etc/profile

Step 3: Test the installation

go version
go env

In addition, you can write a simple Golang program and give it a shot:

cd
mkdir -p src/hello
cd src/hello
vi hello.go

Populate the file ~/src/hello/hello.go with the following code segment:

package main

import "fmt"

func main() {
    fmt.Printf("hello, world/n")
}

Save and quit:

:wq!

Finally, run your first Golang program as follows:

go run hello.go

If everything was done correctly, you will see the output:

hello world

This concludes my tutorial. Thanks for reading.