kakaotalk-env

Configuration Environment for KakaoTalk [1] and its wrapper script to start and quit Kakao Talk in the Debian / Ubuntu Linux.

News

• 2023-07-03: The automatic update of KakaoTalk works on my Debian 12 machine with the 3.5.2.3502 version.

Backgroud

I am weak in typing many words with a small phone, and it turns out so many typos in messages. Since Kakao doesn't support the KakaoTalk Desktop for Linux distribution, I just tried to install it through Wine. This repository turned out to be my struggle while doing so. Kakao should support their application for Linux architecture more and more. The company has a lot of benefits from the Linux community.

Preparation (Debian 12)

Note that with the default Debian installation, ${USER} doesn't belong to the sudo group. One should add the relevant user account to the system sudo group.

usermod -aG sudo ${USER}

Of course, one should log out and log in, then return to this console.

• Install required packages and Wine 8 stable (latest) from the Winehq repository.

bash scripts/updateWine4Debian12.bash

• Configure Wine first. And choose Window 10. (It doesn't matter, actually.)

winecfg

Figure 1

Setup

$ make setup

• Make sure you select 한국어 instead of English at this step. With Wine 7, it works, but UI is ugly.

Setup Step 1

• Click next or continue >

Setup Step 2

Setup Step 3

• Unselect the checkbox with the Daum prefix

Setup Step 4

• Select the Middle button (as default). One has to log in to the Kakao service with an account.

Setup Step 5

Setup Step 6

Setup Step 7

• One should go 화면 option, the sixth from top to bottom, in the left broken menu. The first and second options in the right panel are shown in the following picture. Please select the second one as Nanum font. Then the application will ask us to reboot. After rebooting, one can see the Korean font well.

Setup Step 8

• Version

Setup Step 9

make get

Download KakaoTalk_Setup.exe from [2].

make conf

This rule makes the basic Korean font setup for KakaoTalk by editing $HOME/.wine/system.reg. The default font I've tested is NanumGothic. If you want to test other fonts, please check DEFAULT_FONT in the configure/CONFIG file.

make conf.show

This rule shows the two definitions in $HOME/.wine/system.reg.

$ make conf.show
 88261  "MS Shell Dlg"="NanumGothic"
 88262  "MS Shell Dlg 2"="NanumGothic"

make install

Install KakaoTalk.

• Login with a Kakao account

With the kakaotalk.bash, one can register this application with the Kakao-Talk. And it may start and kill a few times.

make uninstall

Uninstall the installed Kakaotalk through kakaotalk.bash.

Upgrade

The automatic update doesn't work. However, we can install it again from scratch. If there is a running KakaoTalk, this rule will stop it.

make upgrade

If one has the existing KakaoTalk_Setup.exe file locally, the rule triggers an additional rule, make backup. This backup rule renames the existing installation file with an extracted version number suffix, for example, KakaoTalk_Setup.exe_v3.1.6.2572. If the same version file exists, it will overwrite it. In case the latest version doesn't work, use this backup file to recover it.

Command line Commands

Usually, In Mate Desktop, one can find the Kakao icon in `Applications / Wine / Programs / Kakao Talk. However, sometimes, the command line is useful.

• Start it

bash kakaotalk.bash start

or

make start

• Stop it

bash kakaotalk.bash stop

or

make stop

Ubuntu 20.04

• There is no NanumGothic, but one can select NanumBarunGothic in the setting of KakaoTalk.

Figure 11 Kakao Talk Setting.

• ufw is the default active stage but disabled. I tested with both disable and enable (with gufw) with the default ufw firewall configuration. Both cases work fine.

Doesn't work

In case this repository doesn't work for anyone. One may try the method with PlayOnLinux, shown at https://github.com/kimlulz/Katalk_linux.

More Screenshots

Figure 12 Kakao Talk Setting.

Figure 13 Kakao Talk Setting Information.

Figure 14 Kakao Talk and Debian System Information.

Korean Input System

I don't use the Korean Locale because it makes me so much trouble building programs since my First SUSE / Redhat Linux. Now it is much better than before. But I don't need to use them also. I delightedly use ibus-hangul; it is easy to set up and works very well [3]. Here is my locale information if anyone has some difficulties.

LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=
LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8
LC_NUMERIC="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=

Errors and Warnings

• With the latest KakaoTalk, I saw an issue on Debian 10. If one cannot run the KakaoTalk, please see docs/Debian10.md.

References

[1] https://www.kakaocorp.com/service/KakaoTalk?lang=en

[2] https://downloadkakaotalk.com/kakao-talk-for-windows.html

[3] https://github.com/libhangul/ibus-hangul