Install VS Codium and Integrate VS Code Extensions

What is VS Codium

VS Codium is a community-driven, freely-licensed binary distribution of Microsoft’s editor VSCode. Microsoft’s vscode source code is open source (MIT-licensed), but the product available for download (Visual Studio Code) is licensed under this not-FLOSS license and contains telemetry/tracking.

The VSCodium project includes special build scripts that clone Microsoft’s vscode repo, run the build commands, and upload the resulting binaries to their GitHub releases. These binaries are licensed under the MIT license. Telemetry is disabled.

VS Code vs VS Codium

Microsoft's VS Code editor contains a large number of useful and powerful extensions to boost development environment. It also has a large community, which means you can easily find solutions to your problem if you ever had one. However, VS Code contains usage tracking which can be a let down to a lot of people who value their privacy.

VS Codium, on the other hand, is completely free of telemetry. There isn't any large communities of VS Codium, but the solutions to most problems you face in VS Codium can be found on VS Code communities. Other than that, VS Codium functions exactly the same as VS Code.

Installing / Updating VS Codium

Installing and updating VS Codium follows the same procedure.

Firstly, go to vscodium.com. Scroll down to the downloads section and follow the instructions based on what OS you're using.

If you already have VS Codium installed and want to update it to the latest version, you simply follow the install procedure. The newly installed package will update your existing VS Codium to the latest version currently available.

Installing VS Code Extensions on VS Codium

If you've been using VS Codium for a while, you might notice that not all VS Code extensions are available on VS Codium marketplace. This happens because VS Codium uses Open VSX Registry as extension library. It has an adapter to the Marketplace API used by VS Code, however, since it's a relatively new project, VS Codium users are likely to miss some of the extensions from the official Marketplace.

A little workaround that I found is quite simple (but not really efficient) to get VS Code extensions in VS Codium. Here's how I do it.

Download .vsix Extension File

1. Go to Visual Studio Marketplace.

2. Search for the extensions that you need on the searchbar.

3. Click on the extension that you want.

4. On the extension page, scroll down and find the Resources section on the right side of the screen.

5. Hit Download Extension. Your browser will download a .vsix file to your computer.

Integrating .vsix File Into VS Codium

1. Launch your VSCodium.

2. Navigate to the extensions tab on the left-most bar. A list of installed extensions should show up on a panel.

3. On that panel go to the top right corner and click on the 3 dots > Install from VSIX.

4. Once you click that, select the .vsix file that you just downloaded from your browser and click install.

5. The extensions should be installed in your VSCodium after a while.

6. If there's an error message saying something like "the extension you downloaded depends on another extension", go to Visual Studio Marketplace and install that missing extensions.

7. After that you should install the .vsix file through your VSCodium again.

8. Once it's done, restart your VSCodium, and you should have your extensions working :)

Note: Not all extensions can work in VSCodium beacuse there are some extensions which are hardcoded to work only on Microsoft's VSCode

Wrapping Up

While there are pros and cons on each version, I would say that VS Codium is better for those who wants better privacy and don't really mind to manually install extensions from VS Code Marketplace. Both version is great, and the choice is really up to you :)