Desktop Facebook application for Ubuntu

There is this (Messenger for desktop):

enter image description here


There is this (www.messenger.com):

Facebook Messenger 2


Also using these instructions (facebook.com - help: Facebook Messenger for Linux ubuntu) from within Chrome you can create a webapp on any desktop (with Chrome of course) from facebook mobile page:

  1. In chrome go to m.facebook.com
  2. Go to 'hamburger menu' (three lines top right) and navigate to Tools-> Create shortcut
  3. Pick if you want it in start menu (Dash in Ubuntu) and/or desktop shortcut
  4. Enjoy ;)

Facebook Chrome Webapp


If you are looking to install in Trusty (14.04) or Precise (12.04), there is a desktop-facebook package available from ppa:folke-schwinning/personal

If you'd like to try it you can install it with:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:folke-schwinning/personal
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install desktop-facebook 

It doesn't appear that there has been any recent work on this package (last successful builds 4/20/14) and I don't use it so I can't speak to it's efficacy which might have changed since facebook decided to drop support for facebook messenger for Windows but there is an old article about it here. My search hasn't come up with anything more current for Ubuntu (Although there is the f8 app for Andrioid and IOS) it doesn't appear to be installable on Ubuntu.


If you want to go hardcore from the terminal (what Linux user doesn't?), you can use the Facebook Client Terminal.

  1. Install Dependencies: You need NodeJS, NPM, and Git installed to make this work, so do that first:

     sudo apt install npm nodejs-legacy git
    
  2. Go Somewhere Safe: This project will have to sit somewhere. For this example, it will be at ~/.opt/fbct. Decide where you want it to be, it honestly doesn't matter as long as you have write privileges.

     mkdir ~/.opt/fbct
     cd ~/.opt/fbct
    
  3. Clone The Repo: Now that you have your environment set up, clone the repository:

     git clone https://github.com/kissrobber/facebook_client_terminal.git .
    
  4. Set Things Up: Fortunately, setup is (relatively) easy in this case. Just move a file, really:

     mv js/config.json.example js/config.json
    
  5. Log In: Again, relatively simple. You're just logging into Facebook.

     node js/run.js
    

    The command-line terminal will open. Type login to get started. In your browser, navigate to http://127.0.0.1:1337, and click the login link. You will be redirected to the Facebook login.

  6. Use Facebook! You can either use Facebook from the terminal you have open in Node already, or you can use node js/cmd.js <command>. You can get a basic command reference from the Github page linked above.