You can use any install method for this, but for this use case I want Telegram on a portable drive so I’m using the downloadable binaries.

1. Go to https://desktop.telegram.org/ and click the link “Get Telegram for Linux x64”. This downloads a .tar.xz file containing the latest Telegram Desktop.

2. Extract the Telegram folder to the drive where you want to keep the files.

    tar xvf tsetup.4.13.1.tar.xz -C ~/bin/
   

3. Mark telegram binary as executable (note: you may need to repeat this when Telegram updates itself automatically or you’ll be unable to restart Telegram)

    chmod +x ~/bin/Telegram/Telegram
   

4. Create a shell file containing the following:

    #!/usr/bin/env sh
    ./Telegram -many -workdir "./tgdata1"
   

5. Make this file executable:

    chmod +x ~/bin/Telegram/tgdata1.sh
   

Now you can run it from the terminal or to run it from the file explorer, open the Telegram folder and right click tgdata1.sh. Choose “Run as Program”. Create a new shell script for each instance you want to run and specify a different workdir for each. You’ll be able to sign in to a different Telegram account in each instance.