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

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

The problem in one sentence

The fix: rebuild with Tauri v2

What you get

Rebuild it yourself

The config that makes it work

Why not just use the web app in a browser?

The repo

Uninstall You install the official Kimi desktop .deb, fire sudo dpkg -i, and boom: 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is built on Tauri v1, which hard-depends on libwebkit2gtk-4.0.so.37 — a library that shipped with webkit2gtk 4.0, superseded by 4.1 and then dropped entirely.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. Tauri v1 → libwebkit2gtk-4.0 → removed from Ubuntu 24.04+ → dpkg fails. 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. Prerequisites — Rust, Node, and the usual GTK/webkit dev packages: Then it's one command: The .deb lands in dist/. Install it: Done. Kimi runs natively on Ubuntu 26.04 with no missing libraries. Everything lives in config/pake.json. The important bits: The two things that matter: Fair question. A native desktop app gives you: 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. If you need to remove it: 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. Templates let you quickly answer FAQs or store snippets for re-use. Hide child comments as well For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse

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dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of kimi: kimi depends on libwebkit2gtk-4.0-37; however: Package libwebkit2gtk-4.0-37 is not installed. dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of kimi: kimi depends on libwebkit2gtk-4.0-37; however: Package libwebkit2gtk-4.0-37 is not installed. dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of kimi: kimi depends on libwebkit2gtk-4.0-37; however: Package libwebkit2gtk-4.0-37 is not installed. # 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 # 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 # 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 sudo dpkg -i dist/kimi_1.0.0_amd64.deb sudo dpkg -i dist/kimi_1.0.0_amd64.deb sudo dpkg -i dist/kimi_1.0.0_amd64.deb { "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" } } { "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" } } { "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" } } sudo dpkg -r kimi sudo dpkg -r kimi sudo dpkg -r kimi - 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. - 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