Properly installing Stata in Linux is surprisingly cumbersome, and I’ve found that even Statacorp’s own guide is incomplete and outdated. So here’s mine.
I have installed Stata in many Linux systems, but this guide was originally written for Ubuntu 16.04.Having said that, I’ve checked that it works in many other Ubuntu-based and Arch-based distros.I have used Stata 14 here, but with minimal modifications it can be used for versions 13 through 16.I’m also assuming you have a tarball (a
.tar.gz
file) with the appropriate installation files for your operating system, and that you have root privileges in your system.Table of contents
- Install
- Additional improvements
Install Stata on Linux Stata for Linux runs on any 64-bit (x86-64 or compatible) computer running Linux. To use the Stata graphical interface, xstata, you will need to have GTK 2.24 installed. To install Stata for Unix/Linux from the Stata16Linux64.tar.gz or the Stata16Linux64-Legacy.tar.gz tar file: Download the tar file from There are two options for installing Stata for Unix. Become a superuser and extract the gzipped tar file into an empty. Installation Guide Updates FAQs Documentation Register Stata Technical services. Video tutorials Free webinars Publications. Bookstore Stata Journal Stata News. Author Support Program Editor Support Program Teaching with Stata Examples and datasets Web resources Training Stata Conferences.
- Change directory to wherever you have the
.tar.gz
file (e.g. the Downloads folder). There, create a temporary folder to store the installation files (e.g.statainstall
), and extract the installation files to that folder. - Create the installation directory, and change location into it.
- Run the install script.
License
In order you configure the license file you just need to run
./stinit
(you’ll need root privileges to write the file). Be sure to have the serial number, code and authorization. No need to disconnect from the interwebz here, even if you have an “alternative” license ;)Add directory to path
In order to be able to launch Stata you’ll need to add the installation directory to the system path.
- Add one line at the end of your
.bashrc
file to add Stata to the unix path. - You need to source your
.bashrc
so that the changes are effective:(Or you can also restart your terminal)
After adding the install directory to yout path, you should be able to run the appropriate version of Stata from the terminal, e.g.:
This launches the X-window (GUI based) version of Stata MP. You can also run Stata directly within the terminal with
Obviously you’ll need to substitute
mp
for whatever version you have a license for.At this point you can also delete the temporary installation folder:It is important to check if you’re version of Stata is up to date.You can head here to find more information on updating.If you have an internet connection you can simply run
update query
to check automatically.However, if you have an “alternative” license you’ll want to do a manual update (i.e. without internet access).You may run into permissions errors while attempting an update: after running
update query
(online updating) or update db
(manual, offline updating) you can get something likeThis happens due to permission issues in the install folder, but it’s easily fixed.Before attempting to update, you can either start Sata with
sudo
(eg. sudo xstata-mp
), or temporarily change the folder’s permissions:If you do the latter it would be advisable to revert to the default permissions with
I have identified the following potential issues you may have after installing Stata in Linux:
- Interface has no icons (ie. only question marks)
- Program doesn’t have an application menu entry (ie. can’t search for the app)
- Mimetype associations don’t work (ie. you can’t double click a
.dta
file and have it open in Stata) - PDF documentation links don’t work
If you want to solve the first three of these issues at once with little messing around, you can use Daniel Bela’s
stata-integration
, which is a bundled Linux binary script integrating an already installed Stata instance into the desktop environment.I’ve tried the script and it works as advertised, solving all above issues.However, it runs some binaries in sudo
, so you may be uncomfortable with that.If you would rather fix these issues manually, you can check out the sections below.
Interface icons
Although it is only a aesthetic annoyance, it is annoying to have an interface with no icons:
My good friend and colleague at the NBER, Kyle Barron, has written a fix for this issue. The main advantage of Kyle’s solution is that it doesn’t require
sudo
privileges.Unity launcher and desktop file
Even after successfully installing and running Stata, in Ubuntu it won’t be available as an application in the dash, and it won’t have a proper icon in the application launcher. We can easily fix this by creating a
.desktop
file for Stata.In this newly-created file just copy and paste the following, obviously adjusting it if you have a different version or flavor of Stata:
After saving this file you should be able to find Stata from the Unity dash, and when launched it should have its icon.
![Mac Mac](/uploads/1/3/5/1/135130561/545708888.png)
Adding mimetype associations
Adding mimetype associations for Stata files allows you to see Stata files (e.g.
do
files, dta
files) with their proper icons, and more importantly, to be automagically opened in Stata when executed. This is the default behavior in Windows or Mac, but with Linux we have to do a bit of extra work.- First download this tarball with Stata icons and extract it wherever you like.
- In the terminal, go to the location where you have extracted the icons and then change directory to the PNG icons that correspond to your version of Stata. Then issue the following commands:
- Create and edit the mimetype definitions with the following command: Then copy the following inside this newly created file, and save.
- Finally, update the mime and desktop databases so that changes take effect.
That’s it! You should now have a fully functional, “pretty” version of Stata on your Linux system. With a bit of extra work, you can complete the job and add mimetype associations for more obscure Stata files. For instance, I’ve associated
do
and ado
files to be opened up by Atom (my preferred text editor in Linux), as well as sthlp
files (useful for when you’re documenting a program).PDF documentation
The PDF manuals are loaded by a script named
stata_pdf
, located inside your Stata installation directory (eg. /usr/local/stata15/stata_pdf
).By default the script points to Acrobat Reader (acroread
), but Adobe discontinued it around 2014 (good riddance). We can make some edits to stata_pdf
so that it uses Evince, which is the default PDF reader in many Linux distros.First, it always advisable to backup the original file:
Now we edit the script with
nano
(or whatever you prefer):Scroll past the commented text and modify it so that it reads like the following block.It boils down to three edits:
cmd='evince'
in second line and the first two wharg=...
.Install Stata Linux
- If you have a dark GTK+ theme enabled (e.g. the dark variant of Arc, my theme of choice), the X-window version of Stata looks awful. I tried solving this by executing
xstata
with a different GTK theme; i.e. something likebut apparently GTK+ 3 applications have to be coded to respect theGTK_THEME
env variable, and Stata is not. I suspect some answers in this and this questions might contain possible solutions, but I just switched to a light variant of Arc and called it a day.