Appimage: Linux applications that run on different distributions

AppImage is a format that allows you to supply Linux packages, with the ability to run on different distributions, in portable mode and without the need for superuser (root) installation permissions. This project was born in 2004 as a klik, since then it has been in continuous development, in 2011 it changed its name in 2011 to PortableLinuxApps and 2013 is renamed with its current name.

What is AppImage?

The basic idea of ​​the format is that an AppImage Application is equal to a file and that same one contains the application and all the files on which it depends for its operation. In other words, each one is autonomous, includes all the libraries necessary for the application and that are not part of the base system.

What is AppImageKit?

AppImageKit is the set of tools that complement the AppImage format, which facilitates its proper implementation. The project is open source and is located in a GitHub repository.

The main main tools provided by the AppImageKit are:

• create-appdir - A command line tool running on Ubuntu that transforms packaged software into an application directory (AppDir), which can be used as input to AppImageAssistant. Keep in mind that, despite being written for Ubuntu, it should also work in debian and could be ported to other distributions, using the respective package managers. AppImageAssistant: is a graphical user interface application that converts an AppDir into an AppImage. AppRun: the executable that finds and runs the application contained in the AppImage. runtime: the small ELF binary that is embedded in the header of each AppImage.

How to run / install an AppImage?

To run an AppImage, you only have to download the application and we follow these two steps:

Make it executable:

chmod a + x exampleNameApp.AppImage

To run:

./ampleExampleApp.AppImage

Some popular applications such as: Atom, Arduino, Blender, Chromium, Firefox, LibreOffice, among others; they are already providing the opportunity to download an AppImage from their page.

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Advantages and Disadvantages of AppImage

The advantages are quite obvious, it offers users the simplicity and speed to download and run an application without having much experience using Linux; Being autonomous applications, it allows you to relocate and store them under your own criteria. On the other hand, it provides the developer with the opportunity to create applications that will be compatible with different distributions without the need to recompile, this being very beneficial for their realization times.

However, a disadvantage of AppImages would be in having library redundancy, wasting storage space and also running simultaneously in some cases.