Set up OS-agnostic 'stable' apt package

[DrakaSAN]

Your official installation guide ask Debian users to follow the same steps as Ubuntu, which itself ask to add to the source.list this line:

deb [arch=amd64] https://updates.signal.org/desktop/apt xenial main

Note that xenial refer to Ubuntu 16.04 "Xenial Xerus". However, Debian is not Ubuntu, and adding Ubuntu repository to Debian is not a good idea.

While Debian packages are compatible with Ubuntu, the reverse is not guaranteed, and while it often (and may be in that specific case) work, it still give a bad habit to new Debian users, and lead to FrankenDebian which are a pain to give help to.

It would be helpful to set up a second repo for "stretch", or go the VSCode way with a Debian/Ubuntu agnostic "stable" repository, and since the deb does seems to work on Debian, should be relatively easy.

[ghost]

Authors have made an universal application in Electron. First thing which hits you is dogmatic "xenial" repo, which make me wonder, if authors have really seen Linux:

By StromBer - Self-photographed, Public Domain, Link

😃 just kidding, but seriously, there is not only ONE version to "rule them all"

So agnostic, or signed deb with sha256sum, and ideally true human test on imperfect machine.

ps: not criticism, just a humble request, thx for you work guys!

[nikeee]

In case someone runs into the same issue as me. I was using this source:

deb [arch=amd64] https://updates.signal.org/desktop/apt artful main

on disco. Turns out, the signal package provided via artful is older than the one in xenial. Signal refused to do anything because the client was too old. Clicking the "update" button just opens the Linux install page, which didn't help very much.

Also, there are no packages for bionic, cosmic and disco. Just artful and xenial.
Renaming xenial to stable would really eliminate a lot of confusion, even for Ubuntu users.

[scottnonnenberg-signal]

We do plan to move to 'stable' at some point in the future. The problem is the migration strategy; nothing seems like it will be smooth for our users. We're open to ideas on this.

[DrakaSAN]

@scottnonnenberg-signal No idea on the feasibility, and it was probably already proposed, but you could try having xenial becoming a alias of stable, and remove xenial altogether in the future (depending on the patiance of the team).
I've seen some installer (vscode) add the repository themselves, and go and edit them. But that will be irksome to security-minded users.
Whatever communication is done on it, there will be some user that will not see it, unless you keep xenial around forever. A first good step would be to create, use and advertise a stable repository, and phase out xenial in some ways.

[knarrff]

A first good step would be to create, use and advertise a stable repository, and phase out xenial in some ways.

Having a single 'stable' repository has the problem that 'stable' is likely different for Ubuntu and Debian.

[stale]

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