Installing Slack on Ubuntu

| ubuntu | linux | software |

Ah Slack, the email killer, the bane of my existence. Now in stunning Ubuntu 3d. Like chrome before it, and seemingly all electron apps, the .deb is not able to resolve all dependencies. In order to get slack working you must do the following.

  1. Download the latest .deb from here
  2. Try to install the .deb with dpkg
    cd ~/Downloads
    sudo dpkg -i slack-desktop-*-amd64.deb
    
    This step will fail with an error that looks like this:
    levlaz@ubuntu:~/Downloads$ sudo dpkg -i slack-desktop-2.1.2-amd64.deb
    Selecting previously unselected package slack-desktop.
    (Reading database ... 228971 files and directories currently installed.)
    Preparing to unpack slack-desktop-2.1.2-amd64.deb ...
    Unpacking slack-desktop (2.1.2) ...
    dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of slack-desktop:
    slack-desktop depends on libappindicator1; however:
    Package libappindicator1 is not installed.
    

    dpkg: error processing package slack-desktop (–install): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured Processing triggers for gnome-menus (3.13.3-6ubuntu3.1) … Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils (0.22-1ubuntu5) … Processing triggers for bamfdaemon (0.5.3~bzr0+16.04.20160701-0ubuntu1) … Rebuilding /usr/share/applications/bamf-2.index… Processing triggers for mime-support (3.59ubuntu1) … Errors were encountered while processing: slack-desktop

  3. Once that step fails, install the required dependencies with
    sudo apt-get -f install
    
Now you can open Slack and chat away.

Thank you for reading! Share your thoughts with me on bluesky, mastodon, or via email.

Check out some more stuff to read down below.

Most popular posts this month

Recent Favorite Blog Posts

This is a collection of the last 8 posts that I bookmarked.

Articles from blogs I follow around the net

“It Gives Great Demo”

There’s that famous video of Steve Jobs explaining why they don’t didn’t make touchscreen MacBooks: We thought about [a touch screen MacBook] years ago. We’ve done tons of user testing on this and it turns out it doesn’t work! Touch surfaces don’t want to...

via Jim Nielsen’s Blog November 4, 2026

On the road for 8 months: Retrospective

My Trip around the world is now almost 8 months-in. Crazy to look back at the times and all the (36!) Countries I’ve visited, sometimes a day, sometimes almost 2-months! I have now turned 26, and am writing this blog on a phone in a café in Warsaw, Poland....

via Junwoo Hwang November 4, 2026

The Trump Era is Collapsing and Big Tech is Officially On Notice

Cycles Hyped No More on November 4, 2026 The American electorate has spoken. And it’s not just MAGA Trumpism which has been repudiated, but the unseemly reign of douchebag techbroism. Cycles Hyped No More is a monthly column by Jared White where he takes a...

via The Internet Review November 4, 2026

Generated by openring