I Think I Like AppImages More Than Snaps And Flatpaks DistroTube
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Date: 2022-03-30
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Comments and reviews: 10
Gustavo
A while ago I briefly discussed with Michael Tunnel (DLN) about how Snaps do make any sense, yet, he seems to be in love for that format. I'm with you on this race. AppImages make so much more sense. However, and that's a relatively big -however-, IMO, the problem underlying any of these -unversal- packages is related to how a user gets them. The less they're curated by official repos, the lesser secure they are. I did download and run Ink Scape AppImage, however I only did so because the image was available out from Ink Scape's official web site, I will never, ever, download and run any package that's not comming out from Debian repo (that's my distro of choice for now) or from a trustworthy site (like Ink Scape or Postgres' ).
I foresee serious problems arising out from new (or too much lazy) users acting like Windows users and stuffing strange and potentially mallicious code into their machines. What do you think?
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A while ago I briefly discussed with Michael Tunnel (DLN) about how Snaps do make any sense, yet, he seems to be in love for that format. I'm with you on this race. AppImages make so much more sense. However, and that's a relatively big -however-, IMO, the problem underlying any of these -unversal- packages is related to how a user gets them. The less they're curated by official repos, the lesser secure they are. I did download and run Ink Scape AppImage, however I only did so because the image was available out from Ink Scape's official web site, I will never, ever, download and run any package that's not comming out from Debian repo (that's my distro of choice for now) or from a trustworthy site (like Ink Scape or Postgres' ).
I foresee serious problems arising out from new (or too much lazy) users acting like Windows users and stuffing strange and potentially mallicious code into their machines. What do you think?
reply
Herlock
DT, the idea behind AppImages is obviously great, but the implementation might have some shortcomings, give you an example. I have a desktop with an SSD for the KDE Neon O/S and four 4TB HDDs for general data storage. I store my KeePassXC's database in one of these HDDs. If I use the KeePassXC via its AppImage, it does not see any of the HDDs, all it sees is the boot drive, and hence, I cannot access my database, but the moment I install KeePassXC via the deb package, it sees all available drives. This might be due to the containerized application being sandboxed, not sure, but it is definitely an issue.
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DT, the idea behind AppImages is obviously great, but the implementation might have some shortcomings, give you an example. I have a desktop with an SSD for the KDE Neon O/S and four 4TB HDDs for general data storage. I store my KeePassXC's database in one of these HDDs. If I use the KeePassXC via its AppImage, it does not see any of the HDDs, all it sees is the boot drive, and hence, I cannot access my database, but the moment I install KeePassXC via the deb package, it sees all available drives. This might be due to the containerized application being sandboxed, not sure, but it is definitely an issue.
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Mr.
I was just recently exposed to this when I went to install FreeCAD 0.19 (All the repos that weren't snaps were 0.18 and this was Mint 20 and I hadn't enabled snaps yet). Ended up on their site and saw the Appimage download. Was intrigued, tried it out, it reminded me of Snaps, but better (download file, run, no package manager necessary, etc).
The only complaint I had was the lack of integration into my Menu system. Obviously I had NO idea about the collection of tools to go with AppImages. I hope more developers move towards these. It truly is the future of app distribution.
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I was just recently exposed to this when I went to install FreeCAD 0.19 (All the repos that weren't snaps were 0.18 and this was Mint 20 and I hadn't enabled snaps yet). Ended up on their site and saw the Appimage download. Was intrigued, tried it out, it reminded me of Snaps, but better (download file, run, no package manager necessary, etc).
The only complaint I had was the lack of integration into my Menu system. Obviously I had NO idea about the collection of tools to go with AppImages. I hope more developers move towards these. It truly is the future of app distribution.
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Chulito
Thank you for the video. The # 1 thing I like about appimages is that when you delete them they are gone, and #2 is that it is so simple to delete them. You can have two of the same appimages with different versions and delete the version you don't like. Unfortunately, I use Fedora. LOL ! And the appimagelauncher is not available, and finding Fedorans to talk to about appimages is like walking around in the Sahara desert hoping to find a cold refreshing bottle of -Mountain Valley Spring Water,- and a bowl of Cajun crawfish etoufee.
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Thank you for the video. The # 1 thing I like about appimages is that when you delete them they are gone, and #2 is that it is so simple to delete them. You can have two of the same appimages with different versions and delete the version you don't like. Unfortunately, I use Fedora. LOL ! And the appimagelauncher is not available, and finding Fedorans to talk to about appimages is like walking around in the Sahara desert hoping to find a cold refreshing bottle of -Mountain Valley Spring Water,- and a bowl of Cajun crawfish etoufee.
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Austin
Can you by chance cover how to package an Appimage? Not every developer is going to support Appimages but they have some fantastic benefits mainly in that they can run really old versions of software.
As much as I love linux it unfortunately has some serious problems with backwards compatibility. Windows can run basically run almost any program that was ever written for it but with linux the dependencies are always getting updates to the point where non-rolling releases require an entirely new package base every couple of years.
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Can you by chance cover how to package an Appimage? Not every developer is going to support Appimages but they have some fantastic benefits mainly in that they can run really old versions of software.
As much as I love linux it unfortunately has some serious problems with backwards compatibility. Windows can run basically run almost any program that was ever written for it but with linux the dependencies are always getting updates to the point where non-rolling releases require an entirely new package base every couple of years.
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RTSA
Although I enjoy flatpaks as my main source of applications and my favorite standard. I do also like app images. I don't mind them when I use them since they're incredibly easy to manage and get your head around. I avoid using snaps though as I don't want to use different standards and have everything as one standard. Though app image is fine seeing how simple it is.
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Although I enjoy flatpaks as my main source of applications and my favorite standard. I do also like app images. I don't mind them when I use them since they're incredibly easy to manage and get your head around. I avoid using snaps though as I don't want to use different standards and have everything as one standard. Though app image is fine seeing how simple it is.
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John
I see the success of Linux smartphones being through AppImages. I also see AppImageTools getting better at providing patches, so Linux smartphones don-t need to re download all apps all over again when there-s an update. Multi GB app updates on smartphones just plain sux. Be even better if appimages can be runtime isolated by default as well. Like wrapped in LXC/LXD.
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I see the success of Linux smartphones being through AppImages. I also see AppImageTools getting better at providing patches, so Linux smartphones don-t need to re download all apps all over again when there-s an update. Multi GB app updates on smartphones just plain sux. Be even better if appimages can be runtime isolated by default as well. Like wrapped in LXC/LXD.
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John
I was going to agree with you. Then I hit the problem with Nextcloud and Appimage. It appears that Nextcloud client is only available on Linux as an Appimage; but I can't get it to automatically start on a fresh boot with Gnome. It works on KDE. Sigh. I seem to be not the only one who has found this gotcha. So much for a great idea.
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I was going to agree with you. Then I hit the problem with Nextcloud and Appimage. It appears that Nextcloud client is only available on Linux as an Appimage; but I can't get it to automatically start on a fresh boot with Gnome. It works on KDE. Sigh. I seem to be not the only one who has found this gotcha. So much for a great idea.
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Reg
I wanted an up to date copy of Musescore, and turns out their site has the AppImage version as the download. Works fine, and is more up to date than what is in Apt. The only inconvenience is setting it as execute, creating the .desktop file, and downloading an icon. But now Rofi finds it and runs it no problem.
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I wanted an up to date copy of Musescore, and turns out their site has the AppImage version as the download. Works fine, and is more up to date than what is in Apt. The only inconvenience is setting it as execute, creating the .desktop file, and downloading an icon. But now Rofi finds it and runs it no problem.
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gentooman
Yes, AppImage ftw! It's about time FOSS people realize that in order to compete with windows/osx, desktop linux needs a way to distribute apps that is on the same ease-of-use level. If you can't download+click an app to run it, the OS is not easy to use. AppImages make linux feel like a real desktop OS.
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Yes, AppImage ftw! It's about time FOSS people realize that in order to compete with windows/osx, desktop linux needs a way to distribute apps that is on the same ease-of-use level. If you can't download+click an app to run it, the OS is not easy to use. AppImages make linux feel like a real desktop OS.
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