So I just discovered today that Signal now has desktop clients available on Windows, Mac OS and Debian! Yes I know I am late to the party.
For those that don’t know what signal is it’s a end to end encrypted multi platform messenger. In addition to that more popular apps like Telegram have based their encryption on signals.
Now to my problem
So as the noob I am I tried to install signal using the following listed on their site just expecting it to work
curl -s https://updates.signal.org/desktop/apt/keys.asc | sudo apt-key add -
echo “deb [arch=amd64] https://updates.signal.org/desktop/apt xenial main” | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/signal-xenial.list
sudo apt update && sudo apt install signal-desktop
Everything seemed to install fine
Then I tried to find the launcher, to my dismay no cigar.
I couldn’t find the launcher by searching looking through the signal files or trying to launch through the terminal.
I’m running
Linux Mint 18.2
Cinnamon 3.4.6
Kernel 4.4.0-87-generic
I have also tried it on another system with kernel 4.10.0-30-generic
If anyone has installed signal desktop on a Debian based OS and has any pointers I’d be appreciated
Just install the flatpak.
https://flathub.org/apps/details/org.signal.Signal
Flatpak comes enabled on linux mint 18. No setup required.
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Update.
Linux Mint 18.3 comes preinstalled with flatpak unlike 18.2. So I upgraded from 18.2 to 18.3 then installed signal via flatpak and now signal works fine.
Thankyou! 
For future reference is there any downside to using flatpak to install programs?
Can you still update them from the package manager? or sudo apt-get update?
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Runtimes are forward compatible, irrespective of distribution changes. Flatpak applications run on new Linux distribution versions as they are released.
You will have to update them with flatpak update, but they are independent of your system. You’re system will not mess with flatpaks so there will be no breakage when you update your system.
Not really. Except that it uses a bit more storage since it is bundled with everything it needs instead of using what’s already in your system.
Great that sounds even better than the traditional method. Thanks for summing that up.
I’m just going to presume it’s just as secure as the other method too. Right?
Even more so, since its a container. Take a look at the flatpak website for other stuff theyve got too.
Will do. I’m not sure if I should be happy or sad that I find this kinda exciting. There’s just something about stuff that makes my Linux environment even better that rows my boat.
Sounds a bit like a docker container
Or the snap
snap install signal-desktop
I never thought of that one. Did you install signal with that?
I’m a bit reluctant to just try installs things without sighting it from somewhere. From what I remember wasn’t there a vulnerability where even if you typed in a package wrongly it you could download a malicious package of some sort.
The whole premise is people would slip up type it wrong or what they thought it was and instead they would get something else.
That’s the same as if you used apt. Snaps are just git repos generally, packaged so as long as you get the thing you intended you should be fine.
If you’re talking about security concerns, piping an arbitrary file from curl into a sudo command isn’t the safest thing to do either 
Also the problem you describe applies to anything really. Playstore, appstore, chrome extensions, even just googling a software, you name it.
Either method is just as safe as the person using it makes it.
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