Hello, friends. Security in communications is very important nowadays and every day more and more questions arise about security in WhatsApp. So today I will show you how to install Signal Desktop client on Debian 11 / Ubuntu 20.04 / Linux Mint 20.
What is Signal?
Signal is a messaging service that comes to compete with WhatsApp and Telegram. As you can imagine it is less popular than these two but it is very well valued by advanced users. The reason is that Signal is committed to offering the highest level of privacy possible.
Signal uses an end-to-end encryption protocol called Open Whispers Systems for all communications. This means thatmessages are sent from your mobile phone already encrypted and are only decrypted when they reach the recipient.
While I love installing Telegram Dekstop on Linux, it is also true that Signal offers better security. That is why it is so important for many users.
So, let’s get started.
Install Signal Desktop Client on Debian 11 / Ubuntu 20.04 / Linux Mint 20
One of the great advantages of Signal Desktop Client is that the source code is open to everyone. So you can examine it and see that there are no backdoors or malware. And also as you can imagine, it enjoys great support for Linux and especially DEB distributions.
So, open a terminal and make sure to update the whole system.
sudo apt update sudo apt upgrade
Then, download and install the official GPG key from the Signal repository by running these two commands:
wget -O- https://updates.signal.org/desktop/apt/keys.asc | gpg --dearmor > signal-desktop-keyring.gpg cat signal-desktop-keyring.gpg | sudo tee -a /usr/share/keyrings/signal-desktop-keyring.gpg > /dev/null
Now add the official Signal repository run:
echo 'deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/signal-desktop-keyring.gpg] https://updates.signal.org/desktop/apt xenial main' | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/signal-xenial.list
Refresh the APT cache
sudo apt update
And finally, install Signal by running
sudo apt install signal-desktop Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following NEW packages will be installed: signal-desktop 0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 112 not upgraded. Need to get 111 MB of archives. After this operation, 358 MB of additional disk space will be used.
When the installation is finished, you can run it from the main menu.
If you want to uninstall it, you can simply uninstall it by running
sudo apt remove signal-desktop
So, enjoy it.
Conclusion
Signal is an application to take into account if we want to have the maximum privacy possible in our communications. Even though it is not that popular, it is useful for many people who don’t want to compromise their communications.
