Linux (Ubuntu) - Cursor couldn't finish installing the update to version 3.5.17

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

Hi,
I repeatedly get the following error message:
“Cursor couldn’t finish installing the update to version 3.5.17.
Try again.”

Even after retrying, the update still doesn’t work.
Any suggestions?

System: Ubuntu 26.04/Kde

Steps to Reproduce

Open Cursor → Click on Update or Try again

Operating System

Linux

Version Information

Version: 3.4.20
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: 0cf8b06883f54e26bb4f0fb8647c9500ccb43310
Date: 2026-05-15T02:26:10.351Z
Layout: editor
Build Type: Stable
Release Track: Default
Electron: 39.8.1
Chromium: 142.0.7444.265
Node.js: 22.22.1
V8: 14.2.231.22-electron.0
OS: Linux x64 7.0.0-15-generic

Does this stop you from using Cursor

No - Cursor works, but with this issue

Hey, this is a known limitation with Linux auto-update. A couple of things:

  1. How did you install Cursor, via .deb or AppImage? Auto-update currently only works for AppImage. If you installed via .deb, the updater can’t finish the install, so you’ll need to manually download the latest version from Cursor · Download

  2. If it’s AppImage, check:

  • Is libfuse2 installed: sudo apt install libfuse2
  • Does the process have write access to the AppImage file itself (it isn’t in /opt or another protected path without permissions)
  • On Ubuntu 26.04, AppArmor profiles might be stricter. Try running it temporarily from your home directory and see if the update goes through

If none of that helps, share the output from ~/.config/Cursor/logs/ (the latest folder, and the file with update in the name) and we can see exactly what’s failing.

Thanks for your reply.

  1. First installation with deb.

Well I fixed the problem by installing the .dev downloaded from the Cursor website.

Glad you got it working. For the future, since you installed it via a .deb, the Cursor apt repo is already set up in your system at /etc/apt/sources.list.d/cursor.list or cursor.sources, so you can update it with:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade cursor

That’s the standard way for .deb installs, so you won’t need to download the package manually each time.

A couple notes:

If you hit the GPG error, the forum thread Installing Cursor via APT .deb Package Breaks apt update has working fix steps.