After feedback from @bokf I want to clarify my prior instructions for running KDeltaChat on arbitrary Linux distributions using Nix.
Install Nix as described here. That script will modify ~/.profile and print instructions for updating your $PATH in case you don’t want to log out and log in again.
Install KDeltaChat using nix-env -i kdeltachat-unstable. You should now have kdeltachat in your $PATH and hopefully in your launcher.
Keep it up to date using nix-env -u --always.
If /nix is taking up too much space (updating doesn’t remove old versions), run sudo nix-collect-garbage -d.
If you ever want to get rid of Nix (and KDeltaChat), just remove the directory /nix.
If KDeltaChat’s configuration options are not sufficient for you, I recommend importing a backup created with one of the official Delta Chat apps.
I also think, that this is important, as for example for Strato accounts the email adress is different to the server adresses. The email adress is you personal domain name, but server adresses are for all the strato adresses the same.
Can somebody tell me what “Start IO” and “Maybe network” means? It appears, if I tap on the white space in the upper left corner. Yesterday I switched “Start IO” on, today it is off again and I haven’t received the new messages in DeltaChat (only in my mail program).
“Advanced settings” are added now, but idk what it takes to update the Nix package.
“Start IO” enables network. You need to tap it each time after starting the app to go online It should probably be inverted and renamed to “Work offline”.
With proper theming it looks like this:
“Maybe network” tests if the connection is still alive. Android calls it whenever the app is moved from background to foreground.
Thanks for the clarification. That would be better, standard should be connected. In my case even the field to press in the upper left corner is just white:
What I also didn’t find out is how to start a new Chat. In the Android version I think there is a + in the lower right corner to start a new chat. This is missing here? Or I didn’t find it until now?
I also want to suggest Cursed Delta. It’s a terminal UI, thus not so easy to use on a phone, but has support for notifications. You can install it via nix-env -i deltachat-cursed or pip install -U deltachat-cursed. It was written by @adbenitez.
There is a page “Contact requests” where a normal chat is shown. How can I approve this contact and move the chat to the “Chat” page?
Then I have following comments:
Links are not clickable and therefore difficult to copy into the browser
Landscape pictures appear in the chat and are good to see, but portrait pictures are cut and I can see only the third part in the middle of the picture. It would be nice to open pictures in the standard picture viewer by tapping them?
I think the command nix-env -u --always made a downgrade from 13 to 12 …
You can right click a contact request and choose “Start chat”.
Which package was downgraded? You can leave out --always if you only want upgrades, but that might skip important, e.g. security a related, updates of libraries that KDeltaChat depends on afaik.
@link2xt Thanks for the new function!
I don’t know, how to get the new version installed. If I install it again with nix-env -i kdeltachat-unstable according to @dotlambda it installs again version 2021-06-14. So I understand that it must be changed also somewhere in nix to fetch the new version?
There are two other basic points, where I don’t know how difficult they are to implement:
Display the sent/received date and time for each message
Display an error message, if the message could not be sent (or little green check mark, if sent succesfully) or
It should probably be inverted and renamed to “Work offline”.
but connecting an external keyboard I see it!
or