There are several ways to install Telegram on the Linux operating system. Here are 3 methods for installing the latest version of Telegram-Desktop on Linux.

Method 1. Installing Telegram-Desktop from a ready-made assembly for Linux

• Official Telegram download page for Linux -https://telegram.org/dl/desktop/linux

This method is very simple, especially if you leave Telegram in your home directory, where a folder will be created with the name "Telegram" and two executable files - Telegram and Updater.

The download size for the 64 version of Linux is 62.6 MB.

(Below I have slightly complicated the method to organize the location of the files,
but steps 4-6 can be omitted if you launch Telegram from the current user’s directory).

0) Removed the old version of Telegram-Desktop if it was installed on Linux

sudo apt remove telegram-desktop

1) For Linux 64-bit architecture, I downloaded the latest build of Telegram (currently version 6.2.3):
*Linux static build for 64 bit - https://telegram.org/dl/desktop/linux

If Linux 32-bit architecture the latest version of Telegram Desktop is 2.4.4:
*Linux static build for 32 bit - https://updates.tdesktop.com/tlinux32/tsetup32.2.4.4.tar.xz

2) Unpacking the tar.xz archive

• in Explorer (for example, PCManFM or Nautilus) in your home folder - right-click on the archive - "Unpack here". The Telegram and Updater files will be in your home folder, in the new “Telegram” subdirectory.

• or unpacking the tar.xz archive from the command line:

  sudo apt install xz-utils
  ls tsetup*
  tar -xf tsetup.6.2.3.tar.xz

4) After unpacking the XZ archive, you can immediately run the program Telegram из одноименной папки. Но я предпочёл создать папку /opt/telegram, to which I assigned rights and where I moved both Telegram and Updater files:

sudo mkdir /opt/telegram
sudo chown -R root:root /opt/telegram
sudo mv ~/Telegram/Telegram /opt/telegram
sudo mv ~/Telegram/Updater /opt/telegram
sudo chmod +x /opt/telegram/Telegram
sudo chmod +x /opt/telegram/Updater

5) Create a Telegram shortcut in the Start menu.

No manual actions are required. Just launch the Telegram application and it will write the .desktop file to the current user’s folder ~/.local/share/applications:

To create a shortcut in the start menu, you need to launch Telegram:

/opt/telegram/Telegram

Contents of the automatically generated file org.telegram.desktop._023d4009d7ff6bfa2363e883ec2f16df.desktop
in a folder ~/.local/share/applications:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Telegram
Comment=New era of messaging
TryExec=/opt/telegram/Telegram
Exec=/opt/telegram/Telegram -- %u
Icon=org.telegram.desktop
Terminal=false
StartupWMClass=TelegramDesktop
Type=Application
Categories=Chat;Network;InstantMessaging;Qt;
MimeType=x-scheme-handler/tg;x-scheme-handler/tonsite;
Keywords=tg;chat;im;messaging;messenger;sms;tdesktop;
Actions=quit;
DBusActivatable=true
SingleMainWindow=true
X-GNOME-UsesNotifications=true
X-GNOME-SingleWindow=true

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

6)Telegram update. It seems to me that since the /opt/telegram directory requires root rights, you need to run Updater via sudo, with the -E switch (save the current user’s environment variables).

sudo -E /opt/telegram/Updater

7) Delete Telegram, if necessary:

sudo rm -R /opt/telegram
rm ~/.local/share/applications/org.telegram.desktop* -y
rm ~/.local/share/applications/*-Telegram_Desktop.desktop -y

Method 2: Install from the Flatpak app store

With this method, a volume of information of 650 MB will be downloaded from the Internet.
Also, the installation will not be able to download the openh264 codec from the site http://ciscobinary.openh264.org/ due to sanctions against Russia.

1) Install Flatpak on the entire operating system

sudo apt install flatpak

2) Set the mask to openh264 so that Flatpak does not complain if there is no access to the site ciscobinary.openh264.org

flatpak mask --system org.freedesktop.Platform.openh264

3)Installing Telegram from Flatpak:

It is advisable to install Telegram from Flatpak only for the current user. Run the commands

sudo chmod 1777 /var/tmp -R
flatpak install flathub org.telegram.desktop -y

Permission 1777 (drwxrwxrwx) is required to create directories in the /var/tmp folder during installation.

First team

sudo flatpak install flathub org.telegram.desktop -y

4)Installation missing component into the system -ffmpeg codec

You can remove old versions first

sudo flatpak uninstall org.freedesktop.Platform.ffmpeg-full -y

Installing ffmpeg:

sudo flatpak install flathub "org.freedesktop.Platform.ffmpeg-full" -y

press the number corresponding to the version, for example “3”:

Find matches...
Similar links for 'org.freedesktop.Platform.ffmpeg-full' found in the 'flathub' (system) repository:

1) runtime/org.freedesktop.Platform.ffmpeg-full/x86_64/22.08
2) runtime/org.freedesktop.Platform.ffmpeg-full/x86_64/23.08
3) runtime/org.freedesktop.Platform.ffmpeg-full/x86_64/24.08
4) runtime/org.freedesktop.Platform.ffmpeg-full/x86_64/19.08
5) runtime/org.freedesktop.Platform.ffmpeg-full/x86_64/20.08
6) runtime/org.freedesktop.Platform.ffmpeg-full/x86_64/21.08

Which one do you want to use (0 - cancel)? [0-6]: 3

5) Launch Telegram

flatpak run org.telegram.desktop

6) Creating a shortcut in the Start menu is not required, because a shortcut (.desktop file) will be created automatically.

If the shortcut does not appear in the Start - Internet menu (in some non-standard Linux shell), you can create it manually.

sudo nano ~/.local/share/applications/org.telegram.desktop

File contents taken from /var/lib/flatpak/app/org.telegram.desktop/current/active/export/share/applications/,
since the start menu shortcuts for Flatpak are contained in the /var/lib/flatpak/app/ folder

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Telegram
Comment=New era of messaging
Exec=/usr/bin/flatpak run --branch=stable --arch=x86_64 --command=Telegram --file-forwarding org.telegram.desktop -- @@u %u @@
Icon=org.telegram.desktop
Terminal=false
StartupWMClass=TelegramDesktop
Type=Application
Categories=Chat;Network;InstantMessaging;Qt;
MimeType=x-scheme-handler/tg;x-scheme-handler/tonsite;
Keywords=tg;chat;im;messaging;messenger;sms;tdesktop;
Actions=quit;
DBusActivatable=true
SingleMainWindow=true
X-GNOME-UsesNotifications=true
X-GNOME-SingleWindow=true
X-Flatpak=org.telegram.desktop

[Desktop Action quit]
Exec=/usr/bin/flatpak run --branch=stable --arch=x86_64 --command=Telegram org.telegram.desktop -quit
Name=Quit Telegram
Icon=application-exit

6) Delete Telegram

 sudo flatpak uninstall org.telegram.desktop -y

Removing the ffmpeg codec

 sudo flatpak uninstall org.freedesktop.Platform.ffmpeg-full -y

Removing flatpak (as a rule, it is not required, because it can “drag away” all applications that were installed through Flatpak, for example, Firefox, VLC)

sudo apt remove flatpak

Installing Telegram from Snap

1) Install snapd

The Snap Store doesn't work well on weaker computers, slowing down loading speeds. I don’t recommend this method if the drive is not an SSD.

Snap comes pre-installed on the following OS:
*KDE Neon

• Manjaro
  *Solus

• Ubuntu 18.04 and higher

• many OS based on UBuntu

• Zorin OS

Snap is not available on other operating systems, such as Debian or CentOS:

Typically, the command to install snapd is:

su root
apt update
apt install snapd

2) Visit https://snapcraft.io/telegram-desktop, where the command for installing Telegram from Snap is given:

su
snap install telegram-desktop
exit

At the time of writing this article, the version from Snap is 6.2.3

3) Installation of the Telegram shortcut in the Start menu occurred automatically and no manual actions are required.

The .desktop file is located in the folder "/var/lib/snapd/desktop/applications", with the name "telegram-desktop_telegram-desktop.desktop" and the contents:

[Desktop Entry]
X-SnapInstanceName=telegram-desktop
Name=Telegram
Comment=New era of messaging
X-SnapAppName=telegram-desktop
Exec=env BAMF_DESKTOP_FILE_HINT=/var/lib/snapd/desktop/applications/telegram-desktop_telegram-desktop.desktop /snap/bin/telegram-desktop -- %u
Icon=/snap/telegram-desktop/6828/meta/gui/icon.png
Terminal=false
StartupWMClass=TelegramDesktop
Type=Application
Categories=Chat;Network;InstantMessaging;Qt;
MimeType=x-scheme-handler/tg;x-scheme-handler/tonsite;
Keywords=tg;chat;im;messaging;messenger;sms;tdesktop;
Actions=quit;
SingleMainWindow=true

[Desktop Action quit]
X-SnapAppName=telegram-desktop
Exec=env BAMF_DESKTOP_FILE_HINT=/var/lib/snapd/desktop/applications/telegram-desktop_telegram-desktop.desktop /snap/bin/telegram-desktop -quit
Name=Quit Telegram
Icon=/snap/telegram-desktop/6828/meta/gui/icon.png

4) If necessary, Telegram can be removed from Snap:

su
snap remove telegram-desktop
exit

Telegram update

• Update when installing from assembly:

  /opt/telegram/Updater

• Telegram update on Linux when installed from Flatpak

If telegram was installed only for the current user (without sudo)

flatpak update

If Telegram was installed system-wide (with sudo), update also with sudo:

sudo flatpak update

*Update when installing from Snap

sudo snap refresh

Illustration: freepnglogos.com.

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