For those running some variant of Signal on their L5, what are you using and how did you install it?

What kind of Signal apps are people using nowadays on their Librem 5 phones? Signal Desktop built for arm64, or axolotl, or some other kind of client supporting the Signal protocol? What works, and what is a good way to install that?

Flare works pretty good. I haven’t tried anything else though, so can not compare.

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I didnt figure out how to get flare to work but I installed a flatpak from flathub instead of pureos because it was a newer version and actually linked. I think Signal tries to “block” open source apps like flare discreetly/nonofficially because of how their app is supposed GPL but their server says its against ToS to fork the app or whatever, right?

Honestly I wish I had a better solution than I do. Flare for me received messages but would fail to send. Folks said it might get better if I turned off the background thread setting but I didnt find the setting. More recently I was using that arm64 build made by the guy who said he no longer uses signal.

But it seems very creepy/edgy. Somehow Signal convinced PureOS store to automatic update Signal constantly even though the rest of the store operates off of upgrades done through user approval and I was normally just upgrading in command line with apt. But not for Signal, since they want to be more creepy than that.

Edit: Apparently I have a pretty obvious “automatic updates” slider active by default in PureOS store, so maybe that’s my fault and not something I should hassle Signal over. For me, it’s just edgy that Signal requires an Android or iOS from the standpoint of their official support, and I’m tired of it.

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I agree, it’s really bad. I’m surprised that Signal have not changed their position on that because it makes them look bad among privacy-minded folks which should be an important group for Signal. I guess it’s just one more sign of how ridiculously small percentage of people care about (or are even aware of the existence of) anything other than Android or iOS. Google and Apple have a really strong grip on the world in this respect. :slightly_frowning_face:

I’m using elagost’s flatpak.

It’s just a repackaged desktop Signal so it still has all that Electron bloat. But lacking alternatives, it does the job for me.

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Same here, although, I have waydroid installed and actually signal account there as well. I am trying to find a way that I can use the flatpak desktop client to link with the waydroid client. It is going to have to be something with a plugged in web cam I think. I have a MNT camera that should just work.

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I plan to install Molly via F-droid on Waydroid, then use Flare once the current issues are solved (upstream in Whisperfish/presage if I understood correctly)

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