Maybe someone does. It had just occurred to me that it takes less time to click the link and let the page load than it does to read your little blurb. I found that ironic, and in that context wrote what I wrote. I didn’t mean anything by it other than helpful general advice, though yes, I could have been more clear. I sometimes have trouble remembering that context is not universal.
Yeah, the reason I wrote the blurb is that I was cautious of clicking on a link from a new user. Never know what script it could load. Especially when the app is not the same as the title. I just wanted to indicate the link was legit. I could have indicated my context as well. I usually do as this forum attracts a lot of different people, not this time 
Well I’ll tell you what - I won’t hate you if you won’t hate me.
3 Likes
So, here is my problem…
In anticipation of my L5, I want to try Signal. Lacking a smartphone that can run it (still on a Windows Phone), I have installed a couple of desktop clients on both Ubuntu (Signal proper, aswell as Axolotl), and my Windows Surface (Signal itself).
Then I used signal-cli to register my phone number on Signal, and to setup the Windows desktop client as a Signal device.
It all seems to work alright: the daemon communicates between my Ubuntu installation and the Windows client.
But there is one problem, I haven’t solved yet.
I am trying to enter my contacts info in the signal-cli config file (lacking a phone app, I can’t synchronize my phone contacts directly), and synchronizing them via the daemon.
But although communication seems to work nicely (messages do get across), the entered contacts don’t sync.
How could this be?
This is probably not the best place to get an answer for that…
1 Like
You might be right there.
I think I found part of the answer on signal.org:
signal desktop only imports signal users.
So, I guess I need to enter a signal user in signal-cli to test this.
1 Like
It makes sense as Signal limit the amount of data transiting by its server.
I think there will be more discussion on this forum about how to run Signal clients on Linux after the shipment on Evergreen. But you can already start a new topic about your experiments.
Hello! New user here.
I went ahead and made a ‘fund your app’ donation. I do really hope that Signal makes its way onto the Librem phones, I will surely buy one if so!
Do y’all think it’s looking hopeful so far?
4 Likes
I have not voted for Signal yet as messaging app. I’m hesitating because I have used Signal on my Android phone for some time now and there has been a few problems. To one phone number (fairly important) the messages do not come through for some reason ! Sometimes there is a long delay even if the message arrives. Have anybody else experienced that behaviour ? I use Signal as my default message app and the messages go to non-Signal phones. I would like to stick to Signal but cannot afford that some messages do not reach the receiver.
Welcome here @randalthevandal!
I think there will be at least the basic functions of receiving and sending messages but not necessarily all the options that Signal allows on Android.
Indeed some libraries already allow to do this on linux and the demand seems to be strong.
However, Purism is a small company and it is not the 10 000 donation from FYA that will finance all these developments. In the best case, it will fund the equivalent of one developer for 1 year.
The order of priorities is, I think, the basic functions and software of a modern smartphone, stability and battery life, the integration of Matrix (which is a campaign promise), and only after that third party services like Signal.
I wonder if the signal developers cooperate with purism to get a full featured Signal on Linux. The official Signal Desktop got some improvements recently e.g. phone and video calls work now. So signal developers might not want to spend to many recourses on another app. That is just some thoughts. I am not an insider. There is of course some community power, but Signal has sophisticated cryptographic concepts so it won’t be easy to reach the same level of quality than the android app.
Purism had already tried to contact Signal about it and they decline.
Moxie is not interested by a GNU/Linux stand-alone client and he discourages the development of third party clients (for security reasons).
Signal cryptographic concepts have already been implemented in free software libraries, for XMPP OMEMO or Matrix OLM for example. There are also officials Signals libraries on they git.
On the other hand, there may be security problems with the other software components.
2 Likes
That’s not what I heard. The main reasons they discourage third party clients is
- not being able to have a centralized dissemination of the client and a centralized view of downloads, installed versions, etc. via a central corporate app store
- not being able to centrally control UI/UX
At least that’s what they listed in one of their blog posts some years back
It doesn’t make sense as a third party client is by definition a client not controlled by them.
Can you find the blog post about this? I can’t find it.
At the last Chaos Communication Congress 36c3, where he gave a talk. After the talk where people gathered to make questions to him, he was asked if:
With the the releases of the Pinephone and Librem 5, and with the existence of PostmarketOS that aims to bring full GNU/Linux to old smartphones, if they would consider to make a fully featured GNU/Linux client. And not the electron app that can only work if paired with a Smartphone and can only send messages, no voip.
His reply was that resources are scarce, making a client for that platform would be hard resource wise and those platforms should think of a way to support the Android app.
3 Likes
If his main issues are resourcing and control I wonder if those could be somewhat alleviated by Purism (hypothetically) providing the resources - a developer paid to dedicate time to producing and maintaining a full Linux client - that still sits in the OpenWhisperSystems repos, follows their guidelines, design etc, and if required is reviewed by Moxie or their team?
4 Likes
Also when he tried to explain why it was hard, some of his examples, like making it fit well in different form factors (e.g tablet, phone) made me think that he is not well aware of libhandy and Kirigami
1 Like
Many users have tried to explain that on the Signal official github but all issues were closed without discussion.
Moxie has a very exclusive mode of project management.He has ignored all criticism, even constructive criticism, for years. Personally, I don’t expect anything more from Signal, but maybe we’ll have a good surprise.
I prefer Matrix and Element’s mode of operation, which is more community-based.
Today, Matrix doesn’t offer the same level of confidentiality as Signal, especially for the protection of metadata (except if all your contact use the same trustworthy server), but that will change in the future.
When Matrix will work well in P2P, Signal will no longer have many arguments in its favour.
3 Likes
See also this conversation on Twitter: