The application is not installed: "Unable to locate package element desktop"

User Support
1

Hello, I am a newbie in kubes, when installing the element desktop application through the terminal, an error appears …done… done… done … E: Unable to locate package element desktop what could go wrong? I install it on the debian template

2

Hi @Rastaforai,

  1. How exactly did you install the application, what command did you run?

  2. Can you copy the error exactly please?

Both things would help finding out what went wrong.

1 Like
3

not sure with the debian, but if you using fedora you can just run this in template vm :

Fedora 38

dnf config-manager --add-repo https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:jejb1:Element/Fedora_38/home:jejb1:Element.repo
dnf install element-desktop

Fedora 37

dnf config-manager --add-repo https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:jejb1:Element/Fedora_37/home:jejb1:Element.repo
dnf install element-desktop
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4

It seemed to work out, as I understood, so that the application does not disappear, after a reboot, you need to install it on a template, I installed it on the debean 11 template, but the Internet was not connected to it, and it gave an error, I don’t know English well, so I couldn’t make out the error.

Can you suggest a little off topic, my working environment is anon whonix, but my application disappears there after restarting the computer, so it needs to be installed on a template, if I replace sys-firewall with sys-whonix(current), will this template become safer? Or is it not recommended to work in templates?

5

Hi,

I see that the application is on the SNAP store.

Installing the app from the SNAP repository is trivial. I’ve included the application installation process below.

  1. Make sure you have opened the Fedora-37 template terminal.

  2. install two packages: snapd and qubes-snapd-helper:

$sudo dnf install snapd

$sudo dnf install qubes-spapd-helper

  1. After successfully installing the packages, close the terminal window and disable template: fedora-37.

  2. start AppVM, which was based on the fedora-37 template;

  3. start the AppVM terminal and enter the command:

snap install element-desktop

  1. Go to qube AppVM settings and under the “Applications” tab, select “Refresh applications”. The application should be detected.

Note that the above works only for this one AppVM. If you want to have an application installed on several qubes, then you need to go through all these steps again.

6

Thank you for your help, the problem was not connected to the Internet

7

The application should not disappear if you have installed the application in the Debian template. While the application is being installed, you can temporarily set the network in “qube settings” to sys-firewall or sys-whonix. After performing the application installation, you should disable network in the template from “sys-firewall” to “none” and disable the template Debian-11. Then you should create an AppVM based on the Debian-11 template, and in this Appvm you should run the previously installed application. AppVM can access the Internet.

Sys-whonix is usually a safer solution because network packets pass through the tor network. I do not recommend connecting to applications via sys-whonix, as application operators may consider this as suspicious activity. A sys-firewall, on the other hand, is a connection to your ISP, provided that the sys-firewall is connected to sys-net.

8

Your advice helped a lot, everything turned out, now I understand a little how to install, the application! Thank you all who helped

9

This isn’t a Qubes-specific question, but the answer is that the element-desktop package isn’t available in the default Debian repo(s). You should instead consult Element’s own official installation instructions:

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If you have issues with installing in the future, feel free to refer to this guide that I made: