Signal on Fedora
April 25, 2026•229 words
Signal for Linux officially supports only 64-bit, Debian-based Linux distributions, for example, Ubuntu. There are unofficial, community-maintained COPR repositories and a Flatpak, but it doesn’t feel right because you have to trust a third party. Luckily, distrobox makes installation of Ubuntu packages on Fedora dead simple.
So here is how you install an official build of Signal Desktop on Fedora.
- Install distrobox
sudo dnf install distrobox
- Create a container called “signal-ubuntu” and enter it
distrobox-create --name signal-ubuntu --image ubuntu:24.04
distrobox-enter signal-ubuntu
Note: I use Ubuntu 24.04 LTS here, but you can choose another Ubuntu release if you wish (Ubuntu release cycle).
- Execute commands from the download page of Signal in the container
wget -O- https://updates.signal.org/desktop/apt/keys.asc | gpg --dearmor > signal-desktop-keyring.gpg;
cat signal-desktop-keyring.gpg | sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/signal-desktop-keyring.gpg > /dev/null
wget -O signal-desktop.sources https://updates.signal.org/static/desktop/apt/signal-desktop.sources;
cat signal-desktop.sources | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/signal-desktop.sources > /dev/null
sudo apt update && sudo apt install signal-desktop
- It’s also necessary to install libasound2t64 in the container
sudo apt install libasound2t64
- Expose Signal from the container to the host system
distrobox-export --app /usr/share/applications/signal-desktop.desktop
That’s it. You should now see “Signal (on signal-ubuntu)” in the app list of your DE.
- And this is how you upgrade packages in the container, including Signal
distrobox-enter signal-ubuntu
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
Super simple!