That simplifies things tremendously.
Here’s how to use them, and integrate them into your desktop.
Installing Software on Linux
Installing software should be simple and convenient.
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How simple and how convenient that turns out to be is largely down to the package manager of yourdistribution.
Package managers are software applications that let you download other Linux programs, and install them.
Derivative Linux distributions tend to use the package managers of their parent distribution.
So, thankfully, there are not as many package managers are there are distributions.
That’s a lot of additional overhead.
At least, not natively.
Projects such asSnapandFlatpakwere designed to overcome the problem of wrapping applications for each distribution.
TheAppImage projectis just such an initiative.
AppImage is the name of the project, and AppImages are the name for the wrapped applications.
How AppImages Work
AppImage files are not installed in the traditional sense.
The component files that make up the utility package are all contained inside a single file.
They are not unpacked and stored in different directories in the file system.
That unpacking and copying step doesn’t happen with AppImages.
There’s a file system inside an AppImage, usually asquashFS file system.
It then launches the program itself.
This is the only dependency AppImages places on the host.
FUSE is usually pre-installed on modern Linux distributions.
These won’t be in your distribution’s repository.
Usually, you find them on the website for the tool itself.
We’ll download and use FreeCAD, an open-source 3D computer-aided design package.
Browse to theFreeCAD download pageand hit the “64-bit AppImage” button.
When it has been downloaded, locate the file in a terminal window.
Unless you’vechanged the defaults on your web browserit’ll probably be in your “Downloads” directory.
We need to make the AppImage executable.
We’lluse thechmodcommandto add the
(executable) permission.
We’ve downloaded our file and made it executable.
To execute it we can call it by name.
That’s all we had to do on Fedora and Manjaro.
OnUbuntu 22.04, we had to install a library file.
Installing the library file doesn’t affect the installed version of FUSE.
That solved the problem straight away, and we could launch AppImages without issue on Ubuntu Jammy Jellyfish 22.04.
All that’s great.
But what if you want to have your cake and eat it?
It would be much more convenient to be able to launch AppImage applications just like regular, native applications.
But it’s possible nonetheless with AppImageLauncher.
AppImageLauncher
AppImageLauncher monitors a nominated directory.
It scans the directory, looking for AppImage files.
This is repeated for each new AppImage that is added to the directory.
When it detects that an AppImage has been deleted, it removes the integration.
choose the “appimagelauncher-XXX.x86_64.rpm” link for Fedora, or the “appimagelauncher_XXX.bionic_arm64.deb” file for Ubuntu.
The “XXX” represents the version number of the software.
Note that there are links for AppImageLauncherLiteand for AppImageLauncher.
Use the AppImageLauncher links.
Navigate to your downloaded file, and double-click it to start the installation.
OnGNOME, this will start the “Software” utility.
On most keyboards, it is located between the left-hand “Ctrl” and “Alt” keys.
key in “appim” into the search bar.
The AppImageLauncher icon will appear.
Click it to launch the utility.
There’s a tiny bit of configuration to do.
We need to tell AppImageLauncher which directory we want it to monitor.
poke the “folder” icon and browse to the directory you usually store your AppImages in.
We selected our “Downloads” directory.
You could choose a subdirectory if you like, perhaps “/Downloads/apps.”
But if AppImageLauncher is only monitoring a single directory, how will it find AppImages anywhere else?
The answer to that lies on the “appimagelauncherd” tab.
smack the green “Plus” icon to add more directories.
ensure the “Auto Start Auto-Integration Daemon” checkbox is selected.
choose the “OK” button when you’ve made your selections.
In our case, we only have one.
As soon as you punch in “free” you should see an icon for FreeCAD.
Clicking it launches the app.
To test things further, we downloaded the AppImage file for theSubsurfaceapplication.
This time, the genuine icon for the tool had been found and used.
Clicking the icon launched the utility.
We didn’t even need to usechmodto make the AppImage executable.
Another nice touch is that right-clicking the icon lets you delete the AppImage right from the context menu.
More and more applications are offering AppImages.
They may well have an AppImage.
Related:apt vs. apt-get: What’s the Difference on Linux?
