The problem I have with Signal is that it itself pushes people onto the “shitty operating systems”. It does not allow registering from desktop, at least officially. There are workarounds, but they’re cumbersome (especially for a non-technical person, whom Signal is supposed to appeal to), and the official client outright tells you go to use a phone first. And even then, apparently the desktop client is not even full-featured, and not the priority.
I know there are degoogled OSes (running Graphene myself), but you’d need to get lucky or choose a phone with this in mind, while a random given laptop is likely to be able to run Linux.
I would certainly advise everyone to choose a phone with that in mind.
The desktop client is not great, but it works. There certainly are things Signal could do better. Its phone-centric nature is ridiculous and I have no idea why they cling to it. But it’s easier than trying to get everyone to use Matrix or whatever — mainly because more people have heard of it.
For my current phone, I did - I chose a Pixel. But I got aware about OS privacy while in the middle of using an unsupported phone, so for a while, I treated it as a “public place”. So making a phone private may not be viable for everyone.
Plus, the supported phones may be more expensive. Even my current one was $300, which is a lot for me, in addition to not being officially sold here.
The problem I have with Signal is that it itself pushes people onto the “shitty operating systems”. It does not allow registering from desktop, at least officially. There are workarounds, but they’re cumbersome (especially for a non-technical person, whom Signal is supposed to appeal to), and the official client outright tells you go to use a phone first. And even then, apparently the desktop client is not even full-featured, and not the priority.
I know there are degoogled OSes (running Graphene myself), but you’d need to get lucky or choose a phone with this in mind, while a random given laptop is likely to be able to run Linux.
I would certainly advise everyone to choose a phone with that in mind.
The desktop client is not great, but it works. There certainly are things Signal could do better. Its phone-centric nature is ridiculous and I have no idea why they cling to it. But it’s easier than trying to get everyone to use Matrix or whatever — mainly because more people have heard of it.
For my current phone, I did - I chose a Pixel. But I got aware about OS privacy while in the middle of using an unsupported phone, so for a while, I treated it as a “public place”. So making a phone private may not be viable for everyone.
Plus, the supported phones may be more expensive. Even my current one was $300, which is a lot for me, in addition to not being officially sold here.