Signal Desktop is available as a flatpak. Unfortunately, that flatpak is unofficial. That bothered me, so I looked for a way to get the official Signal Desktop installed. It turns out, it’s fairly easy. I’m documenting that process here in case anyone else wants to go this route. In a nutshell, install a Debian-based linux distribution in a DistroBox and then install the official Signal version there:
- DistroShelf:
- It’s possible to create a distrobox through the command line, but Bazzite already includes DistroShelf (which is a GUI for that). So, I opened DistroShelf and hit the plus sign (“+”) at the upper-left to create a distro. Under the Guided tab, I went to Base Image, searched for Debian (any Debian-based distro will do (such as Mint or Ubuntu) so you could search for those), and chose debian-toolbox:latest (choose whatever you’d like from whatever Debian-based distro you like). I gave it a name, kept everything else at default and hit Create.
- When it was done installing, I went to Status and clicked on the terminal icon to open a terminal in Debian. At Signal >> Download Signal , I copied, pasted into that terminal, and ran each of the 3 commands for installing to linux (install the signing key, add the repository, update all and install Signal).
- Once Signal was installed, I closed the terminal and went to Quick Actions > Upgrade Container.
- To get Signal to show up in Bazzite, I went to Quick Actions > Applications > Signal, clicked on the hamburger icon and told it to Export App.
- To get Signal to start automatically, I went to Start > System > System Settings > Autostart > Add New > Application, searched for Signal and added it. After rebooting the computer, Signal started up and was working fine.