Telegram in general

[Eugo]

Since Telegram (aka telegram-desktop) installs fine on several distros, I wouldn't put it under any of them, but rather here in the general PP software.

After surpassing the initial hurdle - some sort of musical chairs shell game with my daughter's Telegram on android, where she cloned herself on my phone, then I reinvented myself as someone else, then she disowned the clone... few more steps that I couldn't even memorize, but okay, I have a working Telegram. Can chat, can talk (audio works), even saw a video of my wife from her (Mint) PC, and perhaps I'll be able to use my phone cameras once - tried that a couple of times, once it didn't work, second time had to reboot the phone.

That first run was in november. Since then I got a couple of updates and my desktop icon went missing. Just disappeared altogether. I have to launch a console and type telegram-desktop, and keep the console open, and eventually, when I quit Telegram, dismiss a dialog telling me that it knows that I had quit Telegram.

I've found the org.telegram.desktop.desktop file somewhere (where it should be), and no matter what I tried, it doesn't show on the desktop. I learned more about .desktop files than I ever wanted to, and still no dice. Is there some simple trick to make it show up?

[Kevin Kofler]

Does it contain any NoDisplay=…, Hidden=…, OnlyShowIn=… and/or NotShowIn=… lines? If so, those should be removed.

[Eugo]

Nope, it doesn't, but there are a few odd bits in it. See if anything catches your eye (as wrong but also as missing). I've only added the serbian translations, everything else is as I found it.

Code:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Telegram Desktop
Name[sr]=Телеграм
Comment=Official desktop version of Telegram messaging app
Comment[sr]=Званични клијент за Телеграм
Type=Application
TryExec=/usr/bin/telegram-desktop
Exec=/usr/bin/telegram-desktop -- %u
Icon=telegram
Terminal=false
StartupWMClass=TelegramDesktop
Type=Application
Categories=Chat;Network;InstantMessaging;Qt;
MimeType=x-scheme-handler/tg;
Keywords=tg;chat;im;messaging;messenger;sms;tdesktop;
Actions=Quit;
SingleMainWindow=true
X-GNOME-UsesNotifications=true
X-GNOME-SingleWindow=true

[Desktop Action Quit]
Exec=/usr/bin/telegram-desktop -quit
Name=Quit Telegram
Icon=application-exit

[alaraajavamma]

Nope, it doesn't, but there are a few odd bits in it. See if anything catches your eye (as wrong but also as missing). I've only added the serbian translations, everything else is as I found it.

Code:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Telegram Desktop
Name[sr]=Телеграм
Comment=Official desktop version of Telegram messaging app
Comment[sr]=Званични клијент за Телеграм
Type=Application
TryExec=/usr/bin/telegram-desktop
Exec=/usr/bin/telegram-desktop -- %u
Icon=telegram
Terminal=false
StartupWMClass=TelegramDesktop
Type=Application
Categories=Chat;Network;InstantMessaging;Qt;
MimeType=x-scheme-handler/tg;
Keywords=tg;chat;im;messaging;messenger;sms;tdesktop;
Actions=Quit;
SingleMainWindow=true
X-GNOME-UsesNotifications=true
X-GNOME-SingleWindow=true

[Desktop Action Quit]
Exec=/usr/bin/telegram-desktop -quit
Name=Quit Telegram
Icon=application-exit

I think workaround for this is to copy org.telegram.desktop.desktop file to ~/.local/share/applications and rename it for example org.telegram.desktop

If you are using OG Pinephone videocalls are "never" gonna work (Pinephone "chokes" way too easily when you are recording video).

[Eugo]

I think workaround for this is to copy org.telegram.desktop.desktop file to ~/.local/share/applications and rename it for example org.telegram.desktop

If you are using OG Pinephone videocalls are "never" gonna work (Pinephone "chokes" way too easily when you are recording video).

Actually I did the copy previously, and it didn't work, but now after renaming it, it did! Thanks!

[Kevin Kofler]

If you are using OG Pinephone videocalls are "never" gonna work (Pinephone "chokes" way too easily when you are recording video).

Never say never. There is work ongoing on making the original PinePhone work with libcamera. (It is included in megi's 6.2 kernel. Unfortunately, this rework of the camera drivers comes with some changes to the media graph that mean that Megapixels needs adapting, which has not happened yet, so distros are likely to withhold the 6.2 upgrade until this is addressed. But it will land eventually.) That should make more applications work with the camera.

Even if the video "chokes" at times, it should not crash the whole videocall.

[alaraajavamma]

Never say never. There is work ongoing on making the original PinePhone work with libcamera. (It is included in megi's 6.2 kernel. Unfortunately, this rework of the camera drivers comes with some changes to the media graph that mean that Megapixels needs adapting, which has not happened yet, so distros are likely to withhold the 6.2 upgrade until this is addressed. But it will land eventually.) That should make more applications work with the camera.

Even if the video "chokes" at times, it should not crash the whole videocall.

I really would love it .
Those pessimistic (or realistic, I don't know?) words are not really my own - I asked about this from Martijn Braam and he told me that it will "never work" (or maybe it will work at proof of concept level)

[Kevin Kofler]

I think the main limiting factor is going to be not the camera hardware (that can actually deliver video data quite reasonably), but the encoding speed. It depends on what codec at what resolution Telegram is going to try to use. VP9 at the camera's full resolution is really slow to encode, at least with libvpx, so the video is going to be more of a slideshow if it attempts to use that (and if it does it in the same thread as the audio encoding and/or the decoding, it is going to make the entire call suck). A faster codec at a lower resolution has more chances to succeed. A faster codec typically means worse compression and hence higher bandwidth requirements, but the lower resolution reduces the bandwidth requirements and at the same time speeds up the process.