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johnohhh1
johnohhh1

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Kimi Desktop on Ubuntu 26.04: Fixing the Broken .deb with Tauri v2

#linux #ubuntu #tauri #desktop

You install the official Kimi desktop .deb, fire sudo dpkg -i, and boom:

dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of kimi:
 kimi depends on libwebkit2gtk-4.0-37; however:
  Package libwebkit2gtk-4.0-37 is not installed.
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That library doesn't exist on Ubuntu 24.04, let alone 26.04. It was removed from the repos over a year ago. The official Kimi desktop package is built on Tauri v1, which hard-depends on libwebkit2gtk-4.0.so.37 — a library that shipped with webkit2gtk 4.0, superseded by 4.1 and then dropped entirely.

So the app is just... broken on any modern Ubuntu. Here's how I fixed it.

The problem in one sentence

Tauri v1 → libwebkit2gtk-4.0 → removed from Ubuntu 24.04+ → dpkg fails.

The fix: rebuild with Tauri v2

Tauri v2 links against libwebkit2gtk-4.1, which is the version shipped in Ubuntu 24.04 and 26.04. So the fix is straightforward: rebuild the app with Tauri v2 instead of v1.

I used Pake v3, which wraps any web app into a native desktop app using Tauri under the hood. One build script, one config file, and you get a .deb that actually installs.

What you get

Feature Detail
Tauri v2 runtime Links against libwebkit2gtk-4.1 — the one Ubuntu actually ships
OAuth / SSO --new-window flag means Google sign-in works in-app instead of being blocked
System tray Desktop integration that works
1200x780 window Matches the original Kimi desktop dimensions

Rebuild it yourself

Prerequisites — Rust, Node, and the usual GTK/webkit dev packages:

# Rust >= 1.85
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

# Node.js >= 22 — use nvm, brew, whatever you prefer

# Build deps
sudo apt install libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev libgtk-3-dev \
  libayatana-appindicator3-dev librsvg2-dev

# Pake CLI
npm install -g pake-cli
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Then it's one command:

./build.sh
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The .deb lands in dist/. Install it:

sudo dpkg -i dist/kimi_1.0.0_amd64.deb
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Done. Kimi runs natively on Ubuntu 26.04 with no missing libraries.

The config that makes it work

Everything lives in config/pake.json. The important bits:

{
  "windows": [{
    "url": "https://kimi.moonshot.cn",
    "new_window": true,
    "width": 1200,
    "height": 780
  }],
  "user_agent": {
    "linux": "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/133.0.0.0 Safari/537.36"
  }
}
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The two things that matter:

  • new_window: true — Without this, OAuth popups (Google sign-in, etc.) get blocked by the webview's navigation policy. This flag tells Pake/Tauri to open them in a new window instead.
  • user_agent.linux — Spoofing a Chrome UA because some OAuth providers reject webview user agents.

Why not just use the web app in a browser?

Fair question. A native desktop app gives you:

  • Alt-Tab separation — Kimi isn't buried among 40 browser tabs
  • System tray — Quick access, stays running in the background
  • Own window chrome — Feels like an app, not a tab
  • Smaller memory footprint — Tauri uses the system webview, not a bundled Electron instance

The repo

github.com/johnohhh1/kimi-app

Clone it, build it, install it. If you're on Ubuntu 24.04+ and want Kimi as a desktop app, this is currently the only way that works.

Uninstall

If you need to remove it:

sudo dpkg -r kimi
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Kimi is a product of Moonshot AI. This project uses the open-source Pake tool (MIT license) to wrap the Kimi web interface as a native desktop application.

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