ScudCloud is an unofficial, open-source Ubuntu Linux desktop client for Slack team communication tool.

Slack is a team communication tool founded by Stewart Butterfield, it offers one-on-one messaging, private groups, persistent chat rooms, direct messaging as well as group chats. All content inside Slack is searchable from one search box. Slack integrates with a number of third-party services, including Google Docs, Dropbox, Heroku, Crashlytics, GitHub and Zendesk.

So far, slack provides Mac, iOS, and Android apps, as well as Web versions. ScudCloud is an non official Linux client that uses the QT library + Webkit to render the web version of Slack, but using the QWebkit-Native bridge to improve desktop integration with:

• native system notifications,
• count of unread notifications at launcher icon,
• launcher icon wobbling on new messages,
• and channels quicklist at launcher icon.

Ubuntu users can easily install the client from the developer’s PPA. So far, Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 10.04 and derivatives are supported.

Just open up terminal from the Dash or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard. When it opens, run 3 commands one by one to add PPA, update system cache and install the app:

sudo apt-add-repository -y ppa:rael-gc/scudcloud

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install scudcloud

For those who don’t want to add PPA, grab the .deb package directly from this page and install it via Ubuntu Software Center.

via: github.com