Whatsapp For ZorinOS?

I have been searching for solutions to this problem all day, but I still can't seem to find a working installer for Whatsapp on ZorinOS. I can find an endless variety of Whatsapp installers in the Software centre, but none of them actually allow for video or audio chats (only messaging). Same thing goes for the web app. Am I missing something here, or is there not a way to get Whatsapp working on Linux?

  • I should note that I am fully aware that there are more secure alternatives to Whatsapp, but we the reason we need to install Whatsapp is because my inlaws live in South Africa, and this is the only program that works for them.

I don't think there is a way to make video calls on WhatsApp in Linux.

Most applications are wrappers for Whatsapp web.

In other words, they will have the same resources as running via browser.

Do you know of any way to make video calls to users on Whatsapp from a different app? Is there some kind of cross-platform app available?

I don't know and I don't think it's possible.

Aggregators like Franz/Ferdium are also based on Whats Web

That sucks. It seems like Meta is purposely bricking it for Linux users.

Personally, due to a history of security issues with WhatsApp I always refused to use it at work. And during lockdown, (Microsoft) Teams was pants - I also refused to use that, preferring Jitsi Meet in a Browser. Currently though, the downside to Jitsi Meet is you must have a GitHub account to be a meeting room moderator - people you invite don't need a GitHub account.

Security concerns aside, Google Meeting can be an alternative to making a video call with good compatibility between devices. Maybe you just need to create the call link and send it to them.

Another alternative:

If you are running latest Firefox you can translate the page into your chosen language. At the bottom of the page an interesting element:

Data protection and ethics

With us you are a customer and not the product. That is why we protect all data and store it securely in Germany. This offers you another advantage: We don't need to give the FBI access to your data – unlike US providers.

While they were Beta testing the newer version of WhatsApp web that doesn’t require the original device to be linked, all services seemed to work for me using Firefox and Chrome. I just use iMessages and Telegram.

Maybe install Boxes or some other virtual machine to spin up Windows or Android and use WhatsApp that way?

Does it work with wine?

You can try. I have never tried it. It might work.

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Yes, the topic is still open and the O.P. is still actively present.

All linux apps I've tried for WhatsApp are just electron behemoths wrapping around web.whatsapp.com anyway, and have pretty poor performance and reliability. Ferdium is pretty neat and I used it for a while on my tablet where screen space was at a premium so having multiple services in a single place was appealing, but it's bulky and slow and power-hungry.

I've ended up cutting out the middleman and just using ungoogled-chromium to "install" a PWA for WhatsApp. It opens in its own window with most of the browser UI hidden, so it almost feels like a dedicated app, but your browser extensions are still there and working. It still doesn't allow voice or video calls, but it runs a lot better and more consistently than any 3rd party app I could find.

I actually use this for several things - WhatsApp, Discord, and Netflix are notable examples - with each having its own separate profile to sandbox them from each other, and from the default profile that is used on the odd occasion I directly launch Chromium as a browser. You need to create a new profile first, then visit the desired site and "install" it.

Note: ungoogled-chromium needs some additional tweaking if you want to install extensions from the Chrome Web Store; if you visit the CWS straight away it won't let you install any. Also, extensions aren't shared between profiles (for good reason) so you need to reinstall any you want whenever you make a new profile for a new PWA.

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This app is an .apk, which is specifically an Android application.

Spammer terminated.

There will only ever be one conference app for me period and that is JitsiMeet. Sadly because it was being misused, you now need a GitHub account to host. Works best on Chromium (https://meet.jit.si), and available for Android on F-Droid.