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Was asked by a new Ubuntu user - who also wants to learn about programming - what he could use to run BASIC code. He was working through a BASIC book before trying out Ubuntu, and he'd like to continue without having to switch back to Windows.

It looks like there are a few BASIC packages in the standard repositories, as well as projects like Mono which may include some kind of BASIC support.

What would be a good recommendation from the standard repositories - or from a deb package - for someone learning the basics of BASIC and new to Ubuntu?

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That highly depends on which BASIC dialect he's learning. –  sepp2k Oct 11 '10 at 16:12
The recommendations for other languages is really outside of the scope of this site. –  dv3500ea Oct 11 '10 at 16:19
I have removed them. Programming questions should be asked on stack overflow. The rest of the question is OK because it is concerning an Ubuntu package. –  dv3500ea Oct 11 '10 at 16:24
@dv3500ea I was saying I didn't want other language recommendations. Since it's about a language, I wanted to be clear I didn't want 'he should learn [language] instead' answers. So I'm not sure why you edited that out, then said the same thing in the comments. –  Tim Lytle Oct 11 '10 at 17:08
I'm sorry, I must have read it incorrectly. I actually thought you meant that you did want recommendations for other languages ... my bad. –  dv3500ea Oct 11 '10 at 20:59

6 Answers 6

up vote 10 down vote accepted

Searching apt reveals

basic256 - educational BASIC programming environment for children yabasic - Yet Another BASIC interpreter

basic256 seems it might be a little better suited for the user, but I'm not sure how closely that dialect will match whatever is in his programming book, which might be frustrating.

Home page here - http://www.basic256.org/index_en

yabasic seems closer to standard BASIC, but I really have no first-hand experience with either.

Good luck.

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Gambas is the nearest equivalent to Visual Basic (It is quite geared towards desktop apps), so would be good if your friend was using Visual Basic.


With Gambas, you can quickly design your program GUI with Qt or GTK+, access MySQL, PostgreSQL, Firebird, ODBC and SQLite databases, pilot KDE applications with DCOP, translate your program into any language, create network applications easily, make 3D OpenGL applications, make CGI web applications, and so on...

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If he is more interested in making games, sdlBasic would be a better option:

sdlBasicInstall Sdlbasic is a small, efficient and multiplatform basic interpreter aimed to game creation using the power of SDL library, it was inspired by the old and glorious AMOS.

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Was there really a need to put this in a separate answer rather than include it in your first answer? –  Roger Pate Oct 12 '10 at 19:17
So that people can vote between the separate basics to give an indication of which is most suitable. –  dv3500ea Oct 12 '10 at 20:20

I have never tried this but I suppose it would be possible to run something like QBASIC through an emulator like DOSBox. DOSBox is available from the repository but he'd have to get his own copy of QBASIC on it once installed.

If someone has tried this feel free to edit this answer with more details.

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You may also consider blassic. Find it at - http://blassic.org/

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Not in the repositories (unless it's in 10.10), but there is a deb package. –  Tim Lytle Oct 14 '10 at 0:27

I Would reommend FreeBasic. There is versions for Linux and Windows. Only ARM version is still missing :(

I have used it in some large projects with no problems. The code is clean and there is a good forum for it: http://www.freebasic.net/

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On askubuntu we use the words Windows and Microsoft. No need for the usage of a $ :) –  Rinzwind Jul 4 '13 at 17:29

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