Telegram is a cloud based messaging application characterized by its fast speed and security features. Currently, it is used by a very large user base and it is the preferred one for them since it has a lot of features that make it different from others. It is similar to WhatsApp but instead of caring more about money than user’s privacy like what does WhatsApp. Telegram is a free and open source application while the user’s privacy is one of its priorities. It is used by every mobile platform, including Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Ubuntu Touch. It is also important to know that it can be used on desktops, thanks to third party applications such as Webogram (Chrome extension), Sigram (Linux native client) and others. Recently, the official desktop apps was released for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X.
In this article, we will list the features of this modern cloud based messaging application that allows you to share pictures, videos and even files. Then, the installation will be outlined.
Features of Telegram
The identification formula with Telegram consists in the mobile number of the user. A SMS will be sent or a call will be made to give the verification code to the possessor of the entered phone number. The phone number for the verification can be changed without losing the old messages. Discussions with groups may be made, send pictures also.
From its different features, we can list the following ones:
- Its availability for desktop and mobile devices: Android, Iphone/Ipad, Windows phone, Web-Version, PC, Mac and Linux.
- A heavily encrypted and self-destruct messages are available. The messages access can be from multiple devices and platform.
- Several security measures to protect it from different hackers.
- It has a very fast speed of processing and message delivery.
- It is a very powerful application, no limit to media and chats.
- It supports desktop notifications, stickers and sending, receiving files of photos and others.
- After 6 months of inactivity, the concerned user account will be deleted automatically.
- There are two types of chats, either an ordinary one which uses client server encryption and can be accessed from multiple devices or the secret chats which uses end-to-end encryption and can be accessed just by the two participating devices.
Installing Telegram in Linux
To install Telegram in Linux you have just to download it from the official website. Your operating system will be detected directly and you will see the button which you have to select responding to your needs. Or, you can use the “wget” command to download it directly as you see in the following line:
# wget https://updates.tdektop.com/tlinux/tsetup.0.7.23.tar.xz
After downloading the concerned package, change the directory from the current working one to the extracted directory.
# tar –xf tsetup.0.23.tar.xz
# cd Telegram/
Later you will use the following line to execute the binary file “Telegram”:
# ./Telegram
Firstly click in the “Start messaging” button,
Enter your phone number and start the execution.
You will receive the code by SMS or by phone call. So enter this verification code, your first and last name too. Then, click in “Signup” button. You have now a Telegram account, so you can start adding your contact by entering their first name, last name and their phone number.
You can start chatting using Telegram interface from every device.
Use Telegram for Ubuntu as an application
Now we will give you the instructions to make Telegram available for your user only. We consider that you are using GNOME or UNITY. So we will start by extracting the download archive from the Telegram website, (if you did it previously you don’t need to repeat it now), then open a terminal window and use the following command to create the needed file for your desktop environment:
Nano .local/share/applications/telegram.desktop
This command will enable you to open the “nano” editor where you can create a new file.
You can see in the contents of the opened editor everything you need for this new file: the name, the image, the directory and the type, and the icon.
[Desktop Entry] Encoding=UTF-8 Name=Telegram Exec=/home/username/Telegram/Telegram Icon=/home/username/Telegram/icon.png Type=Application Categories=Network;
After getting this image, replace the username with your own username in your desktop; save it using “ctrl+o”, confirm it using “Enter” and exit using “ctrl+x”.
Now you will need a few other commands to start using Telegram: so you will need to add the PPA (Personal Package Archive) using the following command:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:noobslab/apps
Then update your Ubunto software sources using the following command:
Sudo apt-get update
Now you can install your Telegram application for your desktop using the following command:
Sudo apt-get install telegram-desktop
So you are able to start using Telegram on your Ubuntu system.
Install Telegram in other Linux Distros
The previous command can’t be with every version of Linux, since not all of them can get an installation through personal package archive of an Arch user repository. If those option you don’t have with your system, so you will install Telegram with the standard method as fellow:
So start by downloading the tar archive of Telegram from its official website, then open up a terminal window:
cd ~/downloads
This command will help you to find the downloaded tar archive. Then extract this folder:
tar –xJvf tsetup.0.7.6.tar
Place the extracted folder in your selected directory using the following command:
Sudo mv Telegram /opt/telegram
Then create a link to be able to run Telegram using the following command:
Sudo ln –sf /opt/telegram/Telegram /usr/bin/telegram
Conclusion
Different messaging applications are used in our days, like iMessage, Google Hangouts, Viber, Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger and many others. All of them are great for use but they don’t have a desktop version. With Telegram isn’t the case you can get a great desktop application which can be opened with pc of mobile. Telegram is a messaging app with a focus on speed and security. It’s super-fast, simple, secure and free. It seamlessly syncs across all of your devices and can be used on desktops, tablets and phones alike where you can send an unlimited amount of messages, photos, videos and files of any type (.doc, .zip, .pdf, etc.).
