AppImages Snaps flatpaks CDE &c - General Information: NOT ABOUT SPECIFIC APPS

[gyrog]

@fredx181,
An aternative to changing the "Exec=" line in the ".desktop" file,
store just the "basename" of the application in "Exec=", e.g. for Firefox have "Exec=firefox",
then store a symbolic link to the "AppRun" script with the filename of what appears in the "Exec=" line, in an appropriate directory in the $PATH.
Then if the application gets moved, it's just a matter of overwriting the symbolic link with a new target.

[gyrog]

- Running the appimage "installs" a . desktop launcher (pointing to the appimage) in ~/.local/share/applications, so it should be added to the menu (category 'Other' ?).

I just look at the current Menu, and think, "This application should be in the menu beside that one.", so then I look up the ".desktop" for that application and "borrow" it's "Categories=" line.
I suspect that "Categories=" needs to be set statically for each application.
It needs to be where the user is likely to look for it.

Hmm...maybe there could be a special "menu" just for "portable" applications.

[fredx181]

@fredx181,
An aternative to changing the "Exec=" line in the ".desktop" file,
store just the "basename" of the application in "Exec=", e.g. for Firefox have "Exec=firefox",
then store a symbolic link to the "AppRun" script with the filename of what appears in the "Exec=" line, in an appropriate directory in the $PATH.
Then if the application gets moved, it's just a matter of overwriting the symbolic link with a new target.

I'm not sure to understand well, isn't what you say about a portable directory case rather than about an appimage ? (I can see that a symlink to "AppRun" (inside a directory) can be launched but to launch an appimage is different).
EDIT: Or maybe you talk about the .desktop file that is inside the appimage ?

Fred

[gyrog]

@fredx181,
If it's an un-extracted ".AppImage" the symbolic link has to be to the ".AppImage" file itself.

Sorry for mis-leadinng you.

[wiak]

Whilst I tend to be an 'official package manager' fan for the appropriate upstream repo installations, I've recently been using a few AppImages, including Ferdium, which I love for Whatsapp and Messenger frontend, and today ungoogled-chromium from https://github.com/ungoogled-software/u ... d-chromium

I also have an old set of apps in a directory I call portableapps - actually they are just apps that could untar into one directory and be used from there via appropriate desktop file, including wps-office older version 10.1.0.5707, masterpdfeditor build 4.3.61, and bluegriffon html editor version 1.7.2.

I use all of these to share between the distros I mainly use, being KLV-airedale (recent RC3 working really well), KLA (Arch based and also using FirstRib initrd for overlayfs functionality), and Zorin Lite 16.2, which I have set up with most of the utilities like filemnt and gtkdialog out of KLV-Airedale.

One exception that I'd like a recent portable version of is KDE's Okular, but it is so huge in that format so I tend just to install using package managers.