When Canonical introduced the Snap packaging for one of most renowned GNU/Linux operating system Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Xenial Xerus, a lot of users got excited to see how the new technology which gives huge emphasis to security is going to be embraced by software developers.

During the course of its introductory phase, loopholes were found as it turns out that the technology isn’t as secure as the company claims. This is expected especially with a new technology and if more developers adopt the system, it will mature and evolve to become the de factor system in the Linux community.

We have already seen the likes of Mozilla provide its Firefox web browser in Snap packaging and the likelihood of other developers following suit is becoming ever more evident.

If you are sporting Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Xenial Xerus and looking to install Telegram, don’t go all jumpy and run over to the official website to download the binary because there is now a Telegram app snap package available.

Though this app is not the Ubuntu Touch Telegram QML app which is maintained by Canonical for Ubuntu phones and tablets but it is the open-source version created and maintained by Telegram for Linux desk top operating systems and has been packaged by a Canonical employee in Snap format.

To install, search for “Telegram” in the Ubuntu Software centre or use this command in the terminal

sudo snap install telegram-sergiusens

It should be noted that this version of the application isn’t as sassy as the Windows, Android, Ios, Mac OS X versions but it does provide a lot of the out of the box features like group chats, stickers, and secure person to person messaging.

There are a few drawbacks involve with this app in the snap format as you can’t actually badge the app to show message notifications (read and unread) and the indicator applet menu to show the app for easy access doesn’t appear.

Additionally, users run the risk of not having Ubuntu integration for the app if using the snap format.