That’s kind of the point though. One of the foundational pillars of a good distribution is mature package management, and that includes not relying on self-updaters that will pollute your system with untracked files
With flatpak devs can’t agree to use a common runtime, so the user ends up with a bunch of different runtimes and even EOL versions of the same runtime, making the storage usage 5x more than the appimage equivalent and this is much worse if you use nvidia which flatpak will download the entire nvidia driver again.
flatpak could not bother to fix the hardcoded~/.var directory, something that AM fixes by simply bind mounting the existing application config/data files to their respective places when sandboxing which yes it is able to sandbox appimages with aisap (bubblewrap).
flatpak threw the mess of handling conflicting applications to the user, so you have to type nonsense like flatpak run io.github.ungoogled_software.ungoogled_chromium, AM just puts the app to PATH like everyone else does, even snap doesn’t have this issue.
I do wish something like AM’s functions was built into an all-in-one package manager for my distro. The closest I found was bauh which handles “AppImage, Debian and Arch Linux packages (including AUR), Flatpak, Snap and Web applications”. Which seems like an all-in-one solution.
But the problem with bauh (that last time I tried it) is that it accesses only a small number of (often very out-of-date) AppImages from the largely moribund AppImageHub.com, unlike AM, which pulls in the latest releases from loads of GitHub repos, and adds more on a frequent basis or request.
I’ve used Linux for years and I also have a ~/Applications folder where I put AppImages, applications cloned with git and stuff like that in. E.g. I have the last Yuzu AppImage in there, since it got taken down, but I also made a .desktop file for it, so I can launch it through the application menu. Btw, you should be able to just double click AppImages in your file explorer to open them.
I have really started to like AppImage. You just download a single file make it executable and it just works.
I use Cursor for coding, and it has an appimage that replaces itself when it updates.
That’s cool and all but it would be even cooler if you could just install and keep it updated through your package manager
Some AppImages have that built in, like Ente.
That’s kind of the point though. One of the foundational pillars of a good distribution is mature package management, and that includes not relying on self-updaters that will pollute your system with untracked files
Absolutely, but don’t AppImage updaters basically just replace the AppImage? They’re self-contained, no?
I use AM package manager for that.
That’s cool.
It would still be even cooler if the app makers just packaged them for distros. Or even just Flatpak.
But that’s a cool project I’ll keep it in mind for my next go with an immutable distro
AM was started because flatpak sucks.
With flatpak devs can’t agree to use a common runtime, so the user ends up with a bunch of different runtimes and even EOL versions of the same runtime, making the storage usage 5x more than the appimage equivalent and this is much worse if you use nvidia which flatpak will download the entire nvidia driver again.
flatpak could not bother to fix the hardcoded
~/.vardirectory, something that AM fixes by simply bind mounting the existing application config/data files to their respective places when sandboxing which yes it is able to sandbox appimages with aisap (bubblewrap).flatpak threw the mess of handling conflicting applications to the user, so you have to type nonsense like
flatpak run io.github.ungoogled_software.ungoogled_chromium, AM just puts the app toPATHlike everyone else does, even snap doesn’t have this issue.I do wish something like AM’s functions was built into an all-in-one package manager for my distro. The closest I found was bauh which handles “AppImage, Debian and Arch Linux packages (including AUR), Flatpak, Snap and Web applications”. Which seems like an all-in-one solution.
But the problem with bauh (that last time I tried it) is that it accesses only a small number of (often very out-of-date) AppImages from the largely moribund AppImageHub.com, unlike AM, which pulls in the latest releases from loads of GitHub repos, and adds more on a frequent basis or request.
updating Hello World program
Some apps are a bitch and a half for some reason, other apps just work
Make a .desktop file, slap it in ./local/share/imdrawingafuckingblank and boom, it’s integrated into your shell menu like any other app
The Nexus Mod App and Foundry VTT work flawlessly and it’s so nice
As a somewhat Linux noob I just made a folder called ~/Apps and launch them through terminal. Not ideal, but I don’t care enough to fix it.
Your suggestion makes me kinda want to fix it though. Doesn’t seem like to much work
Change ~/Apps to ~/bin or ~/.bin & you are doing it like a seasoned pro.
Completely ideal, actually.
Haha, wow. Thanks!
AM puts all AppImages in
/optfor me, as well as automatically creating menu entries, easy updates etc.I’ve used Linux for years and I also have a
~/Applicationsfolder where I put AppImages, applications cloned with git and stuff like that in. E.g. I have the last Yuzu AppImage in there, since it got taken down, but I also made a.desktopfile for it, so I can launch it through the application menu. Btw, you should be able to just double click AppImages in your file explorer to open them.appimaged does exactly that automatically for you.
see: https://streamable.com/dm575h
With that said I prefer AM, because it also adds the applications to
PATH, meaning you typeyuzuon the terminal and it launches yuzu as well.Also a noob and this seems like the most reliable way for sure. As long as I’m in the right directory I’m good
Add that directory to $PATH so you can use those apps in any directory
Thanks!