Hello Linux Geeksters. As you may know, Ricochet is an open-source, peer to peer messaging client which uses Tor to keep the anonymity of the users. The login ID and IP are hidden, the conversations are not stored on any server.
The latest version available is Ricochet 1.1.0, which has been recently released, coming with the below changes:
- Implement a new protocol, intended to improve safety and extensibility
- Brand new application icon, contributed by Lawrence Eastland
- Add Bulgarian, Czech, German, Finnish, Tagalog, French, Dutch, Russian, Swedish, Turkish, and Ukranian translations
- Show a timestamp in chat when more than an hour has passed since the last message. Patch from Jan Noertemann and Robin Burchell
- Improve contact preferences UI design and behavior
- Refresh contact list UI design
- Make sure chat windows are always opened fully on screen
- Fix network setup getting stuck when tor fails to launch
- Correctly display newlines in chat messages
- Remove the unnecessary hidden service self-test at startup
- Update to Qt 5.4.1, OpenSSL 1.0.1m, and Tor 0.2.6.7
In this article I will show you how to install Ricochet 1.1.0 on the most popular Linux systems, including Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Pinguy OS, Elementary OS, Deepin, Peppermint, LXLE, Linux Lite, Debian, SparkyLinux, Fedora, CentOS, OpenSUSE, Mageia, OpenMandriva, Arch Linux and Manjaro.
Because it is not available via any repository, we have to download the archive, extract it, cd into the extracted folder, move it to /opt and symlink the launcher. and run the ricochet file. Follow the instructions for your system’s architecture exactly, in order to get a successful installation.
How to install Ricochet 1.1.0 on 32 bit Linux systems:
$ wget https://ricochet.im/releases/latest/ricochet-1.1.0-static-i686.tar.bz2
$ tar -xjvf ricochet-1.1.0-static-i686.tar.bz2
$ sudo rm -rf /opt/ricochet
$ sudo mv ricochet /opt/ricochet
$ sudo ln -sf /opt/ricochet/firefox /usr/bin/ricochet
How to install Ricochet 1.1.0 on 64 bit Linux systems:
$ wget https://ricochet.im/releases/latest/ricochet-1.1.0-static-x86_64.tar.bz2
$ tar -xjvf ricochet-1.1.0-static-x86_64.tar.bz2
$ sudo rm -rf /opt/ricochet
$ sudo mv ricochet /opt/ricochet
$ sudo ln -sf /opt/ricochet/firefox /usr/bin/ricochet
Optional, to remove ricochet, do:
$ sudo rm -rf /opt/ricochet /usr/bin/ricochet