In this post, I'll provide the detailed steps for installing DataStax Desktop on a laptop running Ubuntu Desktop 20.04.

Prerequisites

Install Docker on your Linux machine. These steps are specifically for Ubuntu. For other Linux distributions, see the Docker installation docs.

STEP P1 - Uninstall old versions of Docker:

$ sudo apt-get remove docker docker-engine docker.io containerd runc

STEP P2 - Set up the repository:

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl gnupg lsb-release

STEP P3 - Add Docker's GPG key:

$ curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/docker-archive-keyring.gpg

STEP P4 - Add the stable source to your machine's list:

$ cd /etc/apt && echo \
  "deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/docker-archive-keyring.gpg] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu \
  $(lsb_release -cs) stable" | sudo tee sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null

STEP P5 - Install Docker Engine:

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io

Configure Docker as non-root

DataStax Desktop runs docker commands using the same Unix ID as your login so you need to configure Docker to run as a non-root user. Otherwise, you will get an error on DataStax Desktop which indicates that Docker is not running:

1. Docker installed and started
Docker v20.10.7 is installed but not running

STEP R1 - Create the docker group if it doesn't already exist:

$ sudo groupadd docker

STEP R2 - Add your login to the group:

$ sudo usermod -aG docker $USER

STEP R3 - Completely logout of your session and log back in for the change to take effect.

Download DataStax Desktop

STEP D1 - Download DataStax Desktop for Linux from the DataStax Downloads site.

STEP D2 - Right-click on the app image file you downloaded and select Properties from the menu.

STEP D3 - In the Permissions tab, click on the Execute field to allow executing the file as a program:

STEP D4 - Double-click on the file to start DataStax Desktop.

If Docker is configured correctly, you should be in a position to create a Cassandra stack: