kakaotalk-env

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

News

• 2025-09-11: Debian 13 Support
• 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 13)

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 latest from the Winehq repository.

bash scripts/UpdateWine4Debian.bash

• Configure Wine first. And choose Window 11. (It doesn't matter, actually.)

winecfg

Figure 1

Setup

$ make setup

• Make sure you select 한국어 instead of English at this step. And hit OK.

Setup Step 1

Setup Step 2

• Click next or continue [ ][ ] >

Setup Step 2.1

• Click next or continue [ ][ ][ ]

Setup Step 3

• Click next or continue [ ][ ]

Setup Step 4

• Click next or continue [ ][ ]

Setup Step 5

• Use QR code login

Setup Step 6

• Go to the Setting to select Nanum Gothic, then kakaotalk will be restarted.

Setup Step 7

• Version

Setup Step 8

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
 69377	"MS Shell Dlg"="NanumBarunGothic"
 69378	"MS Shell Dlg 2"="NanumBarunGothic"

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

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