04-09-2022, 10:32 AM
I have had some success getting Delta Chat running on Pinephone as a messaging app. I used the kDeltachat native (Kirigami-based) client that is under development at https://git.sr.ht/~link2xt/kdeltachat While not fully finished, it has most features working, to make a usable application.
For those not familiar with Delta Chat, it uses email (and Autocrypt end-to-end encryption) with a user interface not dissimilar to Whatsapp, Signal etc. There is no 'central server'. See https://delta.chat for details.
I found account setup using the Android app running on another phone, then making a backup of the account and importing into kDeltachat on the PP is the best way to get started. The resulting library and header files were copied manually to the phone. Performance is quite reasonable even on chats with many hundreds of messages.
The Delta Chat core library (written in Rust) is best cross-compiled on a laptop to get a sane compilation time. On the PP itself, compilation takes multiple hours and needs a large swapfile configured on emmc or SDcard. The kDeltachat application can be compiled directly on the phone. I can post more details if anyone's interested.
For those not familiar with Delta Chat, it uses email (and Autocrypt end-to-end encryption) with a user interface not dissimilar to Whatsapp, Signal etc. There is no 'central server'. See https://delta.chat for details.
I found account setup using the Android app running on another phone, then making a backup of the account and importing into kDeltachat on the PP is the best way to get started. The resulting library and header files were copied manually to the phone. Performance is quite reasonable even on chats with many hundreds of messages.
The Delta Chat core library (written in Rust) is best cross-compiled on a laptop to get a sane compilation time. On the PP itself, compilation takes multiple hours and needs a large swapfile configured on emmc or SDcard. The kDeltachat application can be compiled directly on the phone. I can post more details if anyone's interested.
