Please put minimum OS requirements on the download page

[ssb22]

There is nothing on the download page at https://signal.org/en/download/ stating the minimum OS requirements, so I had to use time and bandwidth downloading before I could find this out. It would be nice to have the minimum requirements pointed out on that page so we know before downloading. (Even nicer if the server-side scripts can read your browser string and warn if your computer seems too old, e.g. Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_7_5))

When I downloaded Signal Desktop 1.39.4 to an 8-year-old Mac Mini running Mac OS 10.7.5, the OS refused to run it, saying "The application requires Mac OS X 10.10 or later".

So I downloaded the Windows version and tried to run it under WINE, but it said "Windows 7 or above is required".

So I tried to install the Linux version into a Vagrant-controlled VirtualBox running Debian 8 "Jessie", but I couldn't get apt-get to see the signal-desktop package (even after installing apt-transport-https and manually editing /etc/apt/sources.list and verifying that apt-get had reported Get:5 https://updates.signal.org xenial InRelease [2,316 B]). When I tried manually looking for files like https://updates.signal.org/ubuntu/dists/xenial/main/binary-amd64/Packages.gz the server kept telling me NoSuchKey no matter which URL I tried (and it wouldn't list its directories).

So I think it would be nice if the download page were to say:

• Mac OS 10.10 or later is required for the Mac version,
• Windows 7 or later is required for the Windows version (and it is not likely to work in WINE),
• and the Linux instructions need to be more specific than saying any amd64 Debian-based distribution will do (as clearly Jessie64 is not included).

Obviously these are requirements of the Electron framework that's being used, and it doesn't help that Electron itself does not currently seem to post any obvious message about the minimum system requirements of Electron applications. But at least we now know a little more about what doesn't work.

I can confirm that the install went as instructed on a laptop running Lubuntu 20.04; I just couldn't also make it work on the old Mac.

[EvanHahn-Signal]

Thanks. I think this is a good idea. I'll discuss with the team to see about getting these added.

[ssb22]

Thanks, I can confirm the Linux install also works as instructed on Debian 10 ("Buster").

Some components (e.g. electron-v8.5-linux-x64/node_sqlite3.node) are compiled against a version of libstdc++.so.6 that defines CXXABI_1.3.9. That ABI version shipped with gcc 5.1 and its associated libraries in April 2015, just missing the release of Debian 8 ("Jessie") that also happened in April 2015 with gcc 4.9.2. So I think it's safe to say that the minimum Linux requirements are at least Debian 9 ("Stretch") or Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.

[ssb22]

Incidentally, if I install Signal Desktop 1.39.5 onto Debian 10 and then copy the /opt/Signal directory onto a Fedora 33 system, I can then run Signal on Fedora 33. This is an alternative to using Snapcraft's build on that platform.

[Jagoche]

There's an inconsistency on Signal webpage regarding minimum system requirements to run Signal Desktop on macOS.

The following page says Signal Desktop requires "macOS 12 and above":
https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007211952-Troubleshooting-Installs-or-Updates

The application itself asks for OS X 10.10. I run it without problems on OS X 10.11.

So... Please, continue supporting El Capitan in the future releases of Signal Desktop. ;)

[stale]

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