There’s going to be an economy of scale there. iStuff gets churned out in vast quantities, so they’re going to get both bulk discounts on the materials to make it and on the production run itself.
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Hi Bryan,
is it possible to install ‘signal-desktop’: https://signal.org/de/download/
That would be interesting for me, already using this on Ubuntu-desktop.
Regards
Obviously I’m not Lunduke, and I did this in a VM and not the real phone but here are my results in the QEMU VM after installing per the website’s instructions:
I mean, I guess it starts, but this is as far as I can get. Like another Electron app I have tried (Joplin) it doesn’t really respect Phosh’s windowing or the screen size. I can click and drag to resize this window but it isn’t enough to do anything useful.
Also, it seems to want to link this via QR code to a phone, rather than treat this device itself as the phone such as it would on Android, I assume.
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This is intended behaviour at the moment. But afaik Signal is thinking about implementing other mechanisms like username/password or something like that. What to my mind is a showstopper is that the Signal desktop app is built with Electron. This app would suck the battery out in no time. It doesn’t even perform very well on desktop.
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Neither Purism nor Signal are working on porting this application to a Linux smartphone.
You can try this: https://axolotl.chat/
More info here: Signal / Silence on GNU+Linux : A comprehensive summary | Librem 5 app
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Signal-desktop won’t work anyway as it is not compiled for arm architecture.
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You are trying to use the desktop client on your L5 PureOS VM, and are complaining it doesn’t work like the mobile app on android?
That’s like buying a fish and complaining it doesn’t walk.
Additionally I worry that Signal’s attention to the general public and bringing encrypted communication to them, precludes supporting retaliative niche products or software distros.
It is most likely easier to get your signal people on librem chat, or some other matrix server, than to hold out for Signal working on the L5 as it does on Android or iOS.
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It’s open source. No problem compiling it from source.
If only it could be that simple.
It is to my mind. And adapting it to the mobile form factor is only a matter of time. The history shows us that sooner or later the Signal team implement the most important Open Source community wishes - it was the same with Websockets support for phones without Play Services. The next thing will be usernane/password authentication.
Maybe, but the desktop client is not a stand-alone software. You need the android or iPhone app running on a smartphone to use it.
I hope they’ll change their minds on this issue.
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Precisely, and unless the Signal team views it as important the work wont get done.
Open source or closed source, if no one is willing to put the time into doing something, it doesn’t get done. It’s not magic.
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The Signal desktop client is theoretical already able to act as standalone. It is just not exposed. Stay positive 
In theory Windows is capable of being Ubuntu. Being realistic doesn’t mean you aren’t staying positive.
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How to use it standalone?
The only usable software I know is not from Signal.org, it’s this one: https://axolotl.chat/
Try this: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md#setting-up-standalone
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From the section you linked:
Note: you won't be linked to a primary phone, which will make testing certain things very difficult (contacts, profiles, and groups are all solely managed on your phone).
Not being able to manage contacts, your profile, or groups seems like a pretty large impediment to using the service.
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From what i see it is electron based
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I tried installing it with Snap on Phosh (Fedora) and it was not a good time. I couldn’t get it to work.