Telegram is a hugely popular messaging client, especially for those interested in privacy. It’s easy to use and widely available for all platforms – Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS all have access to this platform, making it ideal for diverse teams of people. There are a few ways to get Telegram installed on your Linux desktop, so here we take a look at how to install the Telegram Desktop app in Linux.
How to Install the Telegram Desktop App in Ubuntu
Ubuntu users have the easiest time getting access to the Telegram Desktop app without doing anything differently. Just go to the Software Center and search for Telegram in the search bar. Click on the Telegram Desktop choice that comes up and click Install.
You can also install from the terminal by entering the following command:
That’ll grab the latest version from the repositories and install it on your system.
How to Install the Telegram Desktop App in any Linux Distro
There is also a distro-agnostic tarball available from Telegram’s official downloads page. Download it, then extract it, move the binary to the “/opt” directory, and link it to the “/bin” directory with the following:
This presumes that you downloaded it to your “~/Downloads” folder. Change the folder to whichever you downloaded it to.
How to Install the Telegram Desktop App via Snap
Snap packages can be a bit controversial, but they’re an important part of our ecosystem for many users and is the method many use to get the most of their applications. It’s helpful to be able to have very few packages installed on your system and have all desktop apps run in containers, like with Fedora Silverblue.
To install the Snap of the Telegram Desktop app, just enter the following command into your terminal:
This presumes that you have snapd installed and running on your machine. You can check out how to do that here.
How to Install the Telegram Desktop App via Flatpak
There is another universal package format that’s widely available for a huge variety of Linux distros: Flatpak. Many users prefer it because the applications don’t have privileged access to your system, so they’re confined better than Snaps are. Regardless of which you prefer, there is a Flatpak of the Telegram Desktop app on Flathub.
To install it, run the following command on your system:
If you don’t have flatpak set up on your system, check out our guide on how to configure it here. The guide references Fedora, but there are instructions on how to do it for other distros as well.
Regardless of how you install it, you should be able to run the Telegram Desktop App one of two ways, either through the applications menu or through the terminal.
Through the terminal, you can run any of the following commands based on your installation method:
Regardless of how you run it, you are now all set to use Telegram on your Linux Desktop.
If you are still wondering if you should switch to Telegram, we have a comparison of Telegram vs. WhatsApp and how Telegram is more superior. There are also plenty of tricks for Telegram, including creating your own Telegram stickers.
John is a young technical professional with a passion for educating users on the best ways to use their technology. He holds technical certifications covering topics ranging from computer hardware to cybersecurity to Linux system administration.
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