The IDE First things first - Jetbrains. Rider is required, there is no other tool available for writing Xamarin code on Linux. Grab it here https://www.jetbrains.com/rider/ Make sure to install Xamarin.Android support plugin. The installation guide will also have that option available. C# on Linux Next is mono - the layer which allows provides necessary tools to build C# code on Linux and Mac. https://www.mono-project.com/ Now the tricky stuff, installing Xamarin.