Here’s how to set a persistant environment variable in Ubuntu (in this case, to intelli J)

Open up a shell and edit the file /etc/environment

sudo gedit /etc/environment

That will spawn a text editor, which should include a colon seperated list of paths. Add the install location (/bin) inside the intelli J folder to the list, and save the file. Mine looks something like this:

PATH="/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/home/SomeUserName/apps/idea-IC-107.587/bin"

Then refresh your environment variables by firing off the following command:

source /etc/environment

You can check that the variable has updated with:

echo $PATH

which should show you the path variable as you edited it.

Finally, check it’s all joined up by launching Intelli J from a random location:

idea.sh

With a bit of luck, IntelliJ will launch. In which case get a cup of tea to celebrate.