Howto: Popular AppImages one click away

[M. Eerie]

AppImageKit explanation

Worth reading (spanish): AppImages: Advantages and disadvantages

[*] WARNING: I seriously advise you against the indiscriminate use of AppImages. Please, be careful and ALWAYS check your download sources. Always try to get it from the author's website and avoid using AppImages from dubious origins at all costs.

In case of extreme need, try to use firejail

LIST OF (NOTABLE) APPIMAGES (updated):

Office;DTP
LibreOffice (fresh) <-- direct download
Scribus Open Source Desktop Publishing *** Also available as Flatpak (AppImage not working reported by Kulle)
Scribus 1.5.5 AppImage(development release) is working.
eBook Reader;Office
Okular
Buka

Graphics;Image
Gimp (click on "assets" and choose your version to download)
Krita
Inkscape Search the page for 'appimage:linux' and check the status is 'passed', then download "the artifact" (the far right cloud with the arrow). Uncompress. Done
ImageMagick Create, edit, compose, or convert bitmap images

Digikam (500 Mb!!!) Digital photo manager
XnView Cheaper & "Best" image viewer (500+ supported formats)
Blender Grab your version
Ultimaker Cura Powerful, easy-to-use 3D printing software
gEDA Schematic Editor / Electronic Design Automation tools
Draw.io Flowcharts, schematics, diagramming with GDrive/OneDrive/Dropbox integration (Should you need to do Offline Workflowing)
Draw.io online version

Video;Multimedia
MKVtoolnix
KDEnlive
Shotcut --> click on Assets and download
VidCutter-6.0.0-x64 --> click on Assets and download
Openshot --> click on Assets and download
Jubler (Video Subtitling) --> click on Assets and download
Synfig Studio Open-source 2D Animation Software

Music
MuseScore Create, play and print beautiful sheet music
LMMS Let's Make Music

Utilities
VSCodium Visual Studio Code Fork
EncryptPad Minimalist secure text editor and binary encryptor
KeePassXC Open-source password manager (reported by Sergio)
FontBase Fonts manager
FontForge Free (libre) font editor
Cool_Retro_Term --> click on Assets and download
ksnip Screenshot tool that provides many annotation features
Balena Etcher Flashes SD cards & USB drives in 1,2,3
Stacer Linux System Optimizer and Monitoring --> click on Assets and download
Tagspaces direct download. Use tags/colors... etc. and create taxonomies for your files/dirs to organize them. Home page here See the docs. Demo video

Network;
SyncThing
NextCloud Cloud hosting service
ODrive Google Drive sync
Remmina Remote Desktop Client

Misc
GoldenCheetah is a Performance Software for Cyclists, Runners and Triathletes like me NOT
GoldenCheetah --> click on Assets and download


PENDING:
========
Google Earth AppImage
Calibre Not available from source page yet
Bookworm Not available from source page yet


In order to get them at hand, add the relevant .desktop to each AppImage in:



Example:

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[Desktop Entry]
Name=Inkscape-AppImage
Categories=Graphics
Comment=Inkscape working artifact
Exec=/mnt/sdb1/porteus/AppImages/Inkscape-1.0a-56cc79a-x86_64.AppImage
Icon=Inkscape-AppImage
Type=Application

The advantage of this method is, you don't actually waste any RAM while have them preinstalled and one click away.
I.e. if you use XFCE, you can drag from menu to panel and a shortcut will be created at ~/.config/xfce4/panel/launcher-NN folder.

The drawback is, you need more space in your storage because AppImages are generally bloated hosting all needed dependencies to ensure they will work.

One trick is to name the icon with the -Appimage.png suffix, and put it on /usr/share/pixmaps to ensure your custom icon won't be overwritten by any icon installed package. For example: /usr/share/pixmaps/Inkscape-AppImage.png.


**Be carefull the "Exec" line in the ".desktop" file points to the actual location of the AppImage according to your setup. In this case, they are located at /mnt/sdb1.

Should be easy to script a "sed" oneliner to set the right partition at boot time (pointing to $PORTDIR/AppImages maybe). Anyone for the task?
Already done


Remember to make your AppImage executable:


Salut!

-update-

The two I would definitely add to your collection are:

OnlyOffice - https://www.onlyoffice.com/download-desktop.aspx

LOVE - https://love2d.org/

OnlyOffice is not working for me.

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./DesktopEditors: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/libhogweed.so.5: undefined symbol: __gmpn_cnd_sub_n

Had to extract it, and then repackage it removing the offending library (libhogweed). Then it works ok.

-update-

Cryptomator a FOSS client side encryption tool aimed for cloud files. See this review.

Drill is a file search utilty which needs no index.

[Kulle]

Hi,
On the website libreoffice.soluzioniopen.com/stable/
there are three folders: fresh standard still
What is the difference?

[M. Eerie]

Hi Kulle,

What is the difference?

Fresh --> early adopter (6.2.5) as of now
Standard --> Previous branch (6.2.4)
Still --> Enterprise / Corporate use (6.1.6)

See here.

Cheers!

[M. Eerie]

I've discovered a bunch of AppImages that I find interesting.

Will update the list in the first post.

Also found the way to dynamically choose the right path to the apps at boot time:

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bootpart=`echo $PORTDIR | awk -F '/' '{ print $3 }'`

and then:

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sed -i "s/sdb1/$bootpart/g" /home/guest/.local/share/applications/*.desktop

But I'm thinking of a way to populate that folder based upon the .AppImage files found.

[ncmprhnsbl]

one step missing: make the .Appimage executable.
either by in terminal:

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chmod +x example.appimage

or via filemanager properties>permissions> check executable..
unless the appimage is stored on fat32(maybe ntfs too?), then it's already executable..

[M. Eerie]

one step missing: make the .Appimage executable.
either by in terminal:

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chmod +x example.appimage

Yes, thank you.

I've cooked a fast trick to dynamically change the launchers to AppImages.

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#!/bin/bash
# setAppImagesLinks
# change ".desktop"  AppImages links based upon boot partition
# ".desktop" launchers to AppImages ***must*** be created with "sdb1" by default 
#

test $BOOTDEV != /mnt/sdb1 || exit 0

    ### CHANGE LINKS IN MENU
	sed -i "s=/mnt/sd[a-z][0-9]=$BOOTDEV=g" ~/.local/share/applications/*.desktop

    ### CHANGE LINKS IN XFCE4 PANEL
	find ~/.config/xfce4/panel/ -name '*.desktop' -print0 | xargs -0 sed -i "s=/mnt/sd[a-z][0-9]=$BOOTDEV=g"

[M. Eerie]

Updated AGAIN first post. Tomorrow I will NOT put more links.

I think is fairly complete by now.

Cheers!

[M. Eerie]

I quote myself:

Updated AGAIN first post. Tomorrow I will NOT put more links.

I think is fairly complete by now.

Cheers!

[Kulle]

scribus does not work:

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./scribus-1.5.4-linux-x86_64.AppImage: error while loading shared libraries: libgssapi_krb5.so.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

[M. Eerie]

Hi Kulle.

Doesn't work for me either, althought with a different error:

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./scribus-1.5.4-linux-x86_64.AppImage: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/libfontconfig.so.1: undefined symbol: FT_Done_MM_Var

Will look into it because I'm too interested in Scribus.

Thanks for reporting it.

Cheers!

[M. Eerie]

Updated setAppImagesLinks script and added TagSpaces to the list.

[sergio]

Keepassxc for me is basic. AppImage is up-to-date and works just fine (Porteus 5.0RC1 Xfce).
https://keepassxc.org/download/

[Kulle]

KDEnlive (under Porteus4.0 Xfce) does not work:

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guest@porteus:~/Downloads$ ./kdenlive-19.04.3-x86_64.appimage 
kdenlive: error while loading shared libraries: libxcb-keysyms.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

[M. Eerie]

Keepassxc for me is basic. AppImage is up-to-date and works just fine (Porteus 5.0RC1 Xfce).
https://keepassxc.org/download/

Gracias Sergio.

Añadido a la lista.

[M. Eerie]

KDEnlive (under Porteus4.0 Xfce) does not work:

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guest@porteus:~/Downloads$ ./kdenlive-19.04.3-x86_64.appimage 
kdenlive: error while loading shared libraries: libxcb-keysyms.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Same for me

Added xcb-util-keysyms 0.4.0-2 package, and it started, but immediately it crashes with:

Could not create the video preview window
There is something wrong with your Kdenlive install or your driver settings, please fix it.

Maybe try it in Porteus KDE.

Also, there is the option to do this:

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guest@porteus:~/Downloads$ ./kdenlive-19.04.3-x86_64.appimage --appimage-help

or

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guest@porteus:~/Downloads$ ./kdenlive-19.04.3-x86_64.appimage --appimage-extract

and see what is inside to try to spot it.

Thanks for reporting it.