If you are running VSCode on Ubuntu and working with Python files, you may notice it telling you that Pylint isn’t installed and that you should choose a linter.  I don’t know much about linting or why I should care, but I do know that I don’t need VSCode alerting me each time I touch a Python file that Pylint isn’t installed.

So I looked into it.

Turns out I do have Pylint installed.  Turns out it is installed right where it would be expected.  Turns out that is a location which is in my PATH, by default.  Turns out that VSCode already knows all of this.  At least I can which pylint in the VSCode terminal and get an answer.  In fact, I get the correct answer.

And yet VSCode thinks it’s not installed.

It’s an easy enough fix.

##
# Add this change to your personal user settings file in VSCode:

// 20190420 Because VSCode can't find it...
"python.linting.pylintPath": "/usr/local/bin/pylint",
##

(I always make a note including the date whenever I make a change in a configuration file. Can be important later.)

Make that change and restart VSCode.  You should stop seeing this error.  You can read more about this here.