After being excoriated by friends for not joining the smartphone religion (hating Android) I foolishly installed whatsapp-for-linux using snap. I then discovered that it ran in the background likely Googlizing data. So I tried to delete it. What a surprise that the file ares not deletable by root. Chmod can’t change that. So I need some advice to get rid of anything snap installed. I imagine the first step is to remove snapd. Is that correct?
You could actually also start reading the man page of snap:
You could try persuading your friends to use “Signal” in place of “WhatsApp” …
An even better alternative is “Matrix” but, you should setup your own Matrix server(s) for your private (friends-only) messaging network …
Another alternative is “Telegram” – read the Wikipedia article and make your decision …
Thank you. A very clear link. All is done. I have learned my lesson.
Thanks for the suggestions. Unfortunately my friends are in the +75 age group and very resistant to change, especially when their offspring insist on only certain software. As for me I will check out your suggestions. One question. Do they all depend on having an Android phone active in order to activate? The reason being my hammer is dying to crunch my Nokia.
My (70+)-solution to the “don’t like Android-Security”-Problem is:
Have a guest-WIFI allowing internet access only (no internal connections) and let the mobiles (and windows computers) access only that one.
Install Signal and if you like Whatsapp too and perhaps others on the mobile. They can be installed together but they shoudn’t try to handle SMS too (Signal won’t do that anyway). For me it’s only Signal. So I have Signal and SMS – but one friend has Signal, Whatsapp, Telegram and SMS together in one phone to communicate with all of his contacts.
Install the program signal-desktop in linux. It’s will always show the same state as the corresponding mobile phone. If you read a message on one of them, it will be classified as read on both. If you write a message on one of them, it’s is shown as Sent on both.
Some of my friends don’t have Signal. So we use SMS to communicate or someone having both Signal and Whatsapp forwards the message.
I use the repository
https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/network:/im:/signal/$releasever/
for Signal-Desktop
You can install Android x86 (e.g. in a VM on your openSUSE system).
If you have no Google-account you have to create one so that you can access Googles play store and install the WhatsApp.apk.
With WhatsApp you can use your telephone number (landline) to create an account.
Signal is available from the openSUSE repositories – <https://software.opensuse.org/package/signal-desktop>
- But, you have to also have the Signal App installed either on an Android Pocket Telephone or, an Apple iPhone.
Matrix is part of the openSUSE community – <https://news.opensuse.org/2021/07/07/irc-matrix-announcement/>
There’s a Matrix Home Server in the openSUSE repositories – <https://software.opensuse.org/package/matrix-synapse?locale=de>
There’s some unofficial Telegram binaries in the openSUSE repositories – https://software.opensuse.org/package/telegram
Thanks to all. What I love in Linux is that there are usually several solutions to a problem and they keep me busy experimenting.
If you like experimenting then why not have a look at Mastodon (and the rest of the Fediverse)?
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