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It’s Time to Ditch Skype and TeamSpeak, Discord Launches Its App for Linux Users

The app is now available for Ubuntu Linux and other distros

Jan 11, 2017 23:07 GMT  ·  By
Discord app for Linux
   Discord app for Linux

In a very brief announcement posted on Twitter earlier today, January 11, 2016, Discord, the company behind the popular, free, and secure all-in-one voice and text chat for gamers, announced the first stable release of their app for Linux platforms.

Linux was the missing piece for them to achieve full status and offer their services across all major platforms, both on desktop and mobile. Discord is currently available for Android, iOS, Mac, and Windows, but you can also use it directly from the Web, using a compatible web browser.

The app appears to be a direct competitor to Microsoft's Skype VoIP client, as well as the well-known TeamSpeak voice communication platform. It offers a wide range of features, including IP and DDoS protection, in-game overlay, smart push notifications, individual volume control, support for multiple channels, and a modern text chat.

Other noteworthy features of Discord include support for codecs, permissions, and custom keyboard shortcuts, a direct messaging system and friends list. It also promises to keep the CPU usage as minimal as possible, offering low latency support for audio and automatic failover functionality.

Install Discord on Ubuntu now

The first stable release of the official Discord app for Linux systems, versioned 0.0.1, is currently available for download as a binary package for Debian and Ubuntu-based distributions, such as Ubuntu, Debian, Linux Mint, etc. However, to install it, you'll need to have a 64-bit installation.

There's also a source tarball available for download in case you're not running an operating system based on Debian or Ubuntu, but you'll have to compile it. It appears that Discord 0.0.1 already made its way into the Arch Linux AUR repositories, and it's coming soon to Solus, too. Other distros may add Discord to their repositories in the coming weeks.