Official Viber website has .rpm package available for download of Viber Desktop. However, it, sure enough, can’t account for all Linux flavors that support RPM package format.
When I downloaded and installed Viber package, I did not immediately notice that I can’t send images or can’t see higher resolution pictures sent to me. But later I did.
If you follow along your /var/log/messages, you can find a lot of messages related to Viber failing to use some SSL functions:
viber.desktop[29259]: qt.network.ssl: QSslSocket: cannot call unresolved function SSL_library_init
viber.desktop[29259]: qt.network.ssl: QSslSocket: cannot call unresolved function ERR_get_error
viber.desktop[29259]: qt.network.ssl: QSslSocket: cannot call unresolved function SSLv23_client_method
viber.desktop[29259]: qt.network.ssl: QSslSocket: cannot call unresolved function SSL_CTX_new
Now that we know what problem we have, here are some tips and tricks on how to install Viber Desktop properly in CentOS/RHEL 8. And how to have it running without errors.
Install Viber and OpenSSL 1.0.x
The key to making Viber work properly with RHEL 8 based systems is compat-openssl10 package.
Why is because Viber is compiled against older OpenSSL, whereas RHEL 8 ships with new OpenSSL by default.
sudo dnf install https://extras.getpagespeed.com/release-latest.rpm
sudo dnf install viber compat-openssl10
Tweak Viber to use older OpenSSL
This is easy with a few commands:
sudo ln -s /usr/lib64/libssl.so.10 /opt/viber/lib/libssl.so
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libcrypto.so.10 /opt/viber/lib/libcrypto.so
Getting audio messages to play
You may notice that the audio messages do not play in desktop Viber.
Fixing this is relatively easy. Ensure rpmfusion repo is installed first. Then:
sudo dnf install gstreamer1-plugins-bad-freeworld
Restart your Viber and viola, audio messages play fine.
Getting video messages to play
Same problem with videos 🙂 Fixing is also easy:
sudo dnf install gstreamer1-libav
There, not only Viber can be launched now. It is fully functional 🙂