Kali Linux Install Viber

From WikiMLT

This ap­proach of Viber set­up is test­ed with Kali Lin­ux 2022.04.

Down­load and in­stall Viber

Down­load the Viber's .deb pack­age and in­stall it.

wget https://download.cdn.viber.com/cdn/desktop/Linux/viber.deb -O ~/Downloads/viber.deb
sudo apt install ~/Downloads/viber.deb

Cre­ate a Fake 'us-pho­net­ic' Keymap

I'm us­ing Bul­gar­i­an (tra­di­tion­al pho­net­ic) key­board lay­out along­side Eng­lish (US). When I'm try­ing to start Viber when the Eng­lish is used as key­board lay­out the fol­low­ing er­ror pre­vents Viber from start.

viber
xkbcommon: ERROR: Couldn't process include statement for 'us(phonetic)'
xkbcommon: ERROR: Abandoning symbols file "(unnamed)"
xkbcommon: ERROR: Failed to compile xkb_symbols
xkbcommon: ERROR: Failed to compile keymap
[14547:14573:0818/213359.103080:FATAL:xkb_keyboard_layout_engine.cc(640)] Keymap file failed to load: us-phonetic

I do not have idea does Viber, or Gnome 42 or Kali it­self cause the prob­lem, but the eas­i­est workaround that could be ap­plied it to cre­ate a fake 'us-pho­net­ic' keymap in­to the file /​​​usr/​​​share/​​​X11/​​​xkb/​​​symbols/​​​us. Ex­e­cute the fol­low­ing code as sin­gle com­mand to do that.

cat << EOF | sudo tee -a /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/us

// Reference: https://wiki.metalevel.tech/wiki/Kali_Linux_Install_Viber
partial alphanumeric_keys
xkb_symbols "phonetic" {
    include "us(basic)"
    name[Group1]= "English (US, Viber workaround by MLT)";
};
EOF

Fix the App In­di­ca­tor

The Viber's app in­di­ca­tor doesn't work by de­fault for a long time. The work­ing so­lu­tion is to launch it by dbus-launch.

dbus-launch /opt/viber/Viber %u

I'm us­ing the fol­low­ing wrap­per scrip that us­es al­so xdo­tool to add an op­tion to min­i­mize Viber when it is launched.

sudo nano /usr/local/bin/viber.launcher.sh && sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/viber.launcher.sh
#!/bin/sh

# /usr/share/applications/viber.desktop
# Exec=/usr/local/bin/viber.launcher.sh [minimized|close]

if [ "$1" = "close" ]; then
    pkill -9 Viber >/dev/null 2>&1
    exit
else
    dbus-launch /opt/viber/Viber %u &

    if [ "$1" = "minimized" ]; then
        sleep 2 && xdotool windowminimize "$(xdotool search --name "Viber" | tail -1)"
        # The command 'xdotool windowclose' also can be used
    fi
fi

The script viber​.launcher​.sh can be used in the fol­low­ing ways from the com­mand-line.

viber.launcher.sh               # Launch Viber with App Indicator
viber.launcher.sh minimized     # Launch Viber minimized
viber.launcher.sh close         # Kill Viber

Cre­ate Cus­tom Desk­top Launch­ers

The fi­nal step is to cre­ate mod­i­fied desk­top launcher(s) for Viber which us­es the script pre­sent­ed above. You can mod­i­fy di­rect­ly di­rect­ly /usr/share/applications/viber.desktop, but I pre­fer to cre­ate a lo­cal copy with­in my user's home di­rec­to­ry.

nano ~/.local/share/applications/viber.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Name=Viber
Comment=Viber VoIP and messenger
Exec=/usr/local/bin/viber.launcher.sh
Icon=/usr/share/pixmaps/viber.png
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Network;InstantMessaging;P2P;
MimeType=x-scheme-handler/viber;

Ref­er­ences