It is a third-party package, generously maintained and hosted by fellow forum member Adam Thiede (@elagost). Adam’s package takes the original upstream code by the Signal Desktop project and makes a couple of modifications, which are meant to make Signal Desktop usable on the Librem 5. For example, one patch makes the conversation list narrower, while another patch removes the Stories feature. The result is then built for the correct architecture and uploaded to elagost’s self-hosted Flatpak repository.
You can look at these patches in detail on their GitHub repository. It also has logs of the building and packaging process.
In an ideal world, someone would take all these patches and contribute them to the original Signal project. That way, the package could move into the PureOS flatpak repo. It would be easier to use and to maintain that way. But it looks like no one has stepped up to do that yet.
There is a known bug that occurs when you open the dialog box to add an attachment, or maybe even the dialog box for settings, and it stops inputting characters in the message box. If you close out Signal app and then run it again it will work as normal.
Unfortunately in the niche Mobile Linux world, bugs are a way of life
The hamburger menu toggles showing more options on the left column. I toggle it and resized the left column to where I see only avatars for each conversation and the rest of the screen space is for messages
Ok, so seeing just the avatars (or initials) is not enough to make the conversation list useful to you?
I see your point, and somewhat agree.
What we’d really need to fix that is a proper mobile Signal app. As far as I know, nobody is actively working on one.
You should not show that QR code to others like this, it is meant to be scanned by another of your devices to connect those devices securely. But it will not be secure if you shared the QR code, then you may open a possibility for others to pretend they are you.
The idea is that if you have another device where you are using Signal previously, then you can scan that QR code with that other device and then Signal will see the devices as connected to the same person.
Yes, it is a bit awkward to have just the initials there. But I will manage. On the whole, it works pretty well.
I’m just wondering how you use the zoom. I have activated the compositor for this app, and I zoomed it a couple of levels in the app itself. Do I need both? How can you tell at what zoom level you are?
