The software has been released as open source and for numerous platforms

Jun 18, 2014 13:01 GMT  ·  By

One of the most important applications that are needed on the Linux platform is a major messaging app like WhatsApp or Telegram. So far, there is no WhatsApp version, but there are a number of Telegram clients and one of them is called Sigram.

Unfortunately for Linux users, WhatsApp doesn't provide an API for its service and this means that we won't see any native application that can act as a client. The Telegram developers have gone the other way around and provide an API and open source clients.

Telegram was launched by none others than Nikolai and Pavel Durov, the same brothers who also released Vkontakte or VK, one of the biggest social networks in Russia. Their messaging application got off the ground when Facebook announced the acquisition of WhatsApp, and the company has been growing ever since.

They also take pride in the fact that they are using a custom security encryption that hasn't been broken yet, although the Linux community has expressed its concern about this proprietary encryption solution. It's also unclear what happens with the messages and where they are stored.

In any case, the developers from Sialan.labs have released Sigram, a native Telegram client that works on Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Arch Linux, and many other distros. It has a simple interface and integrates very well into the operating system.

Ubuntu Touch already has a Telegram client named Webogram, but it's a web app and it's quite buggy. Sigram would make a great addition if the developers bothered to port it.

“We endeavored to make a simple and different user interface with smooth animations to ready telegram more usable for people. You can transfer any type of files between your Sigram client and other telegram client and Sigram has integrated with Limoo to preview pictures,” reads the official website.

Sigram 0.5.5.2 is also released as open source and users can install it with great ease. We tested the application in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and it worked like a charm. Despite the version number, this seems to be a stable app, but you should not treat it as such.

You can download Sigram 0.5.5.2 from Softpedia, where you will find various file formats for a large number of distros, including the source package.

Remember that this is a development version and it should NOT be installed on production machines. It is intended for testing purposes only.