Installing Clash Verge Rev on Ubuntu 20.04 / Mint 20 — and upgrading its mihomo core

Clash Verge Rev is a desktop GUI for the mihomo proxy core (formerly Clash Meta). It is the maintained fork of the original Clash Verge, which was abandoned in 2023. If a tutorial tells you to use zzzgydi/clash-verge, skip it.

On a modern Ubuntu, installing it takes one command. On my Mint 20.3 (focal, glibc 2.31), the latest .deb would not install, and the failed attempt left apt in a broken state. Unlike Claude Desktop and ChatGPT Desktop, there is no clean way to patch around it this time. The practical fix is to run the last 1.x GUI with an up-to-date core.

Which version can you run?

Clash Verge Rev 2.x is built on Tauri 2 and needs two things from the OS:

Check your system:

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cat /etc/os-release | head -4       # distro and version
uname -m                            # x86_64 → amd64, aarch64 → arm64
ldd --version | head -1             # glibc version
apt-cache policy libwebkit2gtk-4.1-0 | head -3

On Mint 20.3:

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ldd (Ubuntu GLIBC 2.31-0ubuntu9.18) 2.31
libwebkit2gtk-4.1-0:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: (none)

• glibc ≥ 2.35 and a 4.1 candidate exists: install the latest 2.x (see the next section).
• Otherwise: install v1.7.7, the last 1.x release.

Missing webkit 4.1 isn’t the only problem. The 2.x binary itself needs newer glibc symbols:

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dpkg-deb -x Clash.Verge_2.5.6_amd64.deb v2
objdump -T v2/usr/bin/clash-verge | grep -oE 'GLIBC_[0-9.]+' | sort -uV | tail -3

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GLIBC_2.33
GLIBC_2.34
GLIBC_2.35

glibc is the system C library, and replacing it on its own will break the OS. The Linux releases come only as .deb and .rpm, with no AppImage or Flatpak. So on focal the options are v1.7.7, a container (where System Proxy and TUN mode work poorly), or building webkit2gtk-4.1 from source. I went with v1.7.7.

Ubuntu 22.04 and newer: latest 2.x

Download Clash.Verge_<version>_amd64.deb from the releases page and install it with apt so dependencies are resolved:

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cd ~/Downloads
sudo apt install ./Clash.Verge_*_amd64.deb

Keep the ./ in front of the filename. Without it, apt searches the repositories for a package with that name instead of installing the local file.

Ubuntu 20.04 / Mint 20: v1.7.7

v1.7.7 uses Tauri 1, which depends on libwebkit2gtk-4.0-37. focal already has it.

Clean up a failed 2.x install first

I had already tried the 2.5.6 .deb. After that, every apt command showed this:

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You might want to run 'apt --fix-broken install' to correct these.
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 clash-verge : Depends: libwebkit2gtk-4.1-0 but it is not installable
E: Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt --fix-broken install' with no packages (or specify a solution).

This happened even when I was installing the 1.7.7 file. The message names clash-verge, but it refers to the 2.x package already registered in dpkg, not the file on the command line:

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dpkg-query -W -f='${Package} ${Version} ${Status}\n' clash-verge
# clash-verge 2.5.6 install ok unpacked   ← unpacked, never configured

The package was unpacked but can never be configured, and apt refuses to do anything else until it’s gone. Remove it:

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sudo dpkg --purge clash-verge

apt --fix-broken install can’t help here, because the missing dependency doesn’t exist for focal.

Install

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cd ~/Downloads
curl -fLO https://github.com/clash-verge-rev/clash-verge-rev/releases/download/v1.7.7/clash-verge_1.7.7_amd64.deb

# confirm it wants webkit 4.0, not 4.1
dpkg-deb -f clash-verge_1.7.7_amd64.deb Depends
# openssl, libayatana-appindicator3-1, libwebkit2gtk-4.0-37, libgtk-3-0

sudo apt install ./clash-verge_1.7.7_amd64.deb

The arm64, armhf and i386 builds are on the same v1.7.7 release page.

Verify

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dpkg-query -W -f='${Package} ${Version} ${Status}\n' clash-verge
# clash-verge 1.7.7 install ok installed

for b in /usr/bin/clash-verge /usr/bin/verge-mihomo /usr/bin/verge-mihomo-alpha; do
  echo "$b: $(ldd "$b" 2>&1 | grep -c 'not found') missing libs"
done

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/usr/bin/clash-verge: 0 missing libs
/usr/bin/verge-mihomo: 0 missing libs
/usr/bin/verge-mihomo-alpha: 0 missing libs

First-time setup

1. Launch Clash Verge from the menu, or run clash-verge &.
2. Go to Profiles, paste your subscription URL, click Import, then click the profile to activate it.
3. Go to Proxies and pick a node.
4. Go to Settings and turn on System Proxy. To route all traffic, including apps that ignore the system proxy, also turn on TUN Mode. It asks for your password so it can install a helper service.

Upgrading the mihomo core

v1.7.7 won’t get any more releases, and its bundled core is old:

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verge-mihomo -v
# Mihomo Meta v1.18.7 linux amd64 with go1.22.5 Sun Jul 28 05:47:02 UTC 2024

Protocol support, rule features and bug fixes come from the core, not the GUI. The core is a separate binary, /usr/bin/verge-mihomo, and mihomo’s release builds are statically linked Go programs, so the latest one runs fine on glibc 2.31.

Pick the right build

mihomo publishes separate amd64 builds for different x86-64 microarchitecture levels:

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grep -o -m1 -wE 'avx2|bmi2' /proc/cpuinfo | sort -u

• If both avx2 and bmi2 are printed, use amd64-v3, which is the fastest.
• Otherwise use amd64-compatible, which runs on any amd64 CPU.

Download and test before installing

Get the current version number from the mihomo releases page. It was v1.19.31 when I wrote this:

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cd ~/Downloads
VER=v1.19.31
curl -fL -o mihomo.gz \
  https://github.com/MetaCubeX/mihomo/releases/download/$VER/mihomo-linux-amd64-v3-$VER.gz
gunzip -f mihomo.gz
chmod +x mihomo
mv mihomo verge-mihomo-$VER

./verge-mihomo-$VER -v
file verge-mihomo-$VER

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Mihomo Meta v1.19.31 linux amd64 with go1.26.8 Mon Sep 14 13:20:46 UTC 2026
verge-mihomo-v1.19.31: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), statically linked, stripped

If -v prints a version, the binary works on this system.

Replace the old core

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# stop Clash Verge and its core
pkill -f clash-verge; pkill -f verge-mihomo

# back up the old core, install the new one
sudo cp /usr/bin/verge-mihomo /usr/bin/verge-mihomo.bak
sudo install -m 755 ~/Downloads/verge-mihomo-$VER /usr/bin/verge-mihomo

verge-mihomo -v
# Mihomo Meta v1.19.31 ...

Reopen Clash Verge, go to Settings → Clash Core, and make sure Mihomo is selected, not Mihomo Alpha. It should show the new version.

Caveats

• Rollback: sudo mv /usr/bin/verge-mihomo.bak /usr/bin/verge-mihomo.
• Reinstalling the package undoes the upgrade. Reinstalling or upgrading clash-verge restores the bundled 1.18.7 core. Run the replace step again afterwards.
• Config compatibility. A few options changed between mihomo 1.18 and 1.19. If a profile stops loading after the upgrade, compare the error in the Clash Verge logs with the mihomo docs, or roll back.
• The alpha core, /usr/bin/verge-mihomo-alpha, can be upgraded the same way using a build from mihomo’s Prerelease-Alpha tag.

Uninstall

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sudo apt remove clash-verge        # keep config
sudo apt purge clash-verge         # also remove system-level config
rm -rf ~/.local/share/io.github.clash-verge-rev.clash-verge-rev   # profiles and user config

TL;DR

Standard support for focal has ended. Upgrading to Mint 21 or 22 gets you security updates and the current Clash Verge. Until then, v1.7.7 with a current mihomo core works fine.