Linux and Puppy versions that support MW's portable apps

[Governor]

@mikewalsh

Is there a list of Puppy versions that support Mike's portable apps?

The portable apps would not run in MXLinux.
Are there other Linux distros that support Mike's portable apps?

Thanks!

[mikewalsh]

@Governor :-

Um.....you COULD try AntiX Linux. When I first embarked on this whole business with the portable apps, some 5 years ago - and let us not forget to give credit here to @fredx181 , since it was he that got me thinking originally with his own 'portable' Firefox - I was at that time running an install of AntiX from a flash drive.

I found that Fred's 'portable' build of Firefox ran without any issues in AntiX.......and this was probably due to the fact that Antix, like Puppy, is primarily a single-user distro, and it, too, runs as root (or did then). Also, Antix offered the options to run ROX-filer and JWM.....if you didn't like Openbox or Fluxbox. Naturally, I plumped for what I was most familiar with.

That was 5 years ago. I haven't played with current AntiX at all, so I can't say if things are still the same.....

Worth investigating, I guess.

Mike.

[fredx181]

It depends, some portable browsers from Mike are setup to run "as-spot" (using the run-as-spot script included in most Puppies).
So in that case a distro needs to have a 'spot' user included (and a run-as-spot script) and no mainstream distro like MX or Antix or Ubuntu have it, so won't work that way.
Other portables (not using run-as-spot) may work from those distros, but do NOT run them from FAT32 or NTFS, run from a Linux filesystem e.g. ext3 or ext4.

[Governor]

Yeah, I found out the hard way that many apps don't like FAT32. I had problems with the Brave browser before I moved it to a ext4 partition. And VLC seldom worked, and when it did, it took forever to start up. Both work fine on an ext4 partition.

So I guess there is no actual list of distros that Mike's portable apps will run on. It is a little out of my league to begin creating a spot user and associated script, and I really don't have time to fiddle with it.

So what do the people who use other distros do for portable apps?

It depends, some portable browsers from Mike are setup to run "as-spot" (using the run-as-spot script included in most Puppies).
So in that case a distro needs to have a 'spot' user included (and a run-as-spot script) and no mainstream distro like MX or Antix or Ubuntu have it, so won't work that way.
Other portables (not using run-as-spot) may work from those distros, but do NOT run them from FAT32 or NTFS, run from a Linux filesystem e.g. ext3 or ext4.

[Governor]

1) I don't suppose you happen to have a list of distros that your portable apps should work on?

2) I already asked @fredx181 this question, but I will ask your opinion as well:
What do the people who use other distros do for portable apps?
Thanks.

@Governor :-

Um.....you COULD try AntiX Linux. When I first embarked on this whole business with the portable apps, some 5 years ago - and let us not forget to give credit here to @fredx181 , since it was he that got me thinking originally with his own 'portable' Firefox - I was at that time running an install of AntiX from a flash drive.

I found that Fred's 'portable' build of Firefox ran without any issues in AntiX.......and this was probably due to the fact that Antix, like Puppy, is primarily a single-user distro, and it, too, runs as root (or did then). Also, Antix offered the options to run ROX-filer and JWM.....if you didn't like Openbox or Fluxbox. Naturally, I plumped for what I was most familiar with.

That was 5 years ago. I haven't played with current AntiX at all, so I can't say if things are still the same.....

Worth investigating, I guess.

Mike.

[fredx181]

What do the people who use other distros do for portable apps?

Nothing I guess , the portable apps from Mike are shared in this Puppy forum and probably most are designed to use from Puppy only (edit: some exceptions perhaps, but don't know which)
(edit; I hope this time you are not going to call this a 'bug' )

[Governor]

No, this does not qualify as a bug.

What do the people who use other distros do for portable apps?

Nothing I guess , the portable apps from Mike are shared in this Puppy forum and probably most are designed to use from Puppy only (edit: some exceptions perhaps, but don't know which)
(edit; I hope this time you are not going to call this a 'bug' )

[mikeslr]

Governor wrote: " What do the people who use other distros do for portable apps?"

I use AppImages. Found this recipe for creating an AppImage Launcher under LinuxMint. Download, remove false '.gz'. It opens in any wordprocess that can handle .odt files, e.g. LibreOffice and I think Abiword.

LinuxMint - create launcher for AppImage.odt.gz

(105.82 KiB) Downloaded 29 times

[mikewalsh]

@Governor :-

What do the people who use other distros do for portable apps?

Mm. Well, technically speaking, AppImages, Flatpaks and Snaps all qualify as "portable" apps. I don't know how it is with Snaps and Flatpaks; both require a 'framework' to be in place in whatever distro you use them in. Snaps are a Canonical thing; Flatpaks are being more widely adopted by the greater Linux community, but due to the above-mentioned 'framework', I fail to understand how they CAN be considered 'portable'.

Both do contain everything they need to run, and their main claim to fame is that of isolating the app from the host OS by sandboxing it. This is true of AppImages, yet you can happily move an AppImage from one distro to another, click on it to run it and it should fire up. AppImages only require that fusermount be on the system.....'fuse' being an acronym for 'filesystem in user-space'. An AppImage creates its own 'virtual file-system' in /tmp for the duration, interacting with the kernel from that location.

===================================

Common-place or not, the one thing all these different implementations have in common is creating a fresh batch of config files in every distro you run them in. Which struck me as incredibly untidy, since if you run a given AppImage in 20 different distros, you end up with 20 sets of the same identical config stuff.....which then gets left behind when you move on to another distro and take the AppImage with you! Plus you have to set it all up again from scratch every time you run it.....

In the Windoze world, these are catered for by the PortableApps.com website. And these have the right idea; the config stuff is also contained within the portable directory, so having set-up a PortableApp the way you like it, you can shut it down, unplug' em from the system - the recommended way to run these is from a flash drive - go to another machine/version of Windows, plug the drive back in again, fire it up and just carry on where you left off!

I did just this for my very last annual re-install of XP, more than a decade ago; instead of installing stuff as normal, I outfitted the system entirely with PortableApps. It was the smoothest, most glitch-free year I'd ever had, mainly due to the fact that PortableApps also contain their own 'mini-registry', and don't write to the system at all.....

.....and this is what I wanted to achieve in Puppy once I started experimenting, Fred having demonstrated it was perfectly "do-able" in Linux. An application you could run in one Puppy, shut-down, boot into another Puppy, fire it up again and just carry on with whatever you were doing....

I 'share' Puppy-portables between multiple Pups by running them from an 'external' data partition (my system has 2 storage drives; one just for Puppy stuff, and the other for pretty much everything else). You can achieve exactly the same effect by running them from a suitably-formatted flash-drive/external HDD/external SSD.

Mike.

[Governor]

Governor wrote: " What do the people who use other distros do for portable apps?"

I use AppImages. Found this recipe for creating an AppImage Launcher under LinuxMint. Download, remove false '.gz'. It opens in any wordprocess that can handle .odt files, e.g. LibreOffice and I think Abiword.
LinuxMint - create launcher for AppImage.odt.gz

Does it mean Mike's portables will work on LinuxMint using this method?

[Governor]

@Governor :-

What do the people who use other distros do for portable apps?

Mm. Well, technically speaking, AppImages, Flatpaks and Snaps all qualify as "portable" apps. I don't know how it is with Snaps and Flatpaks; both require a 'framework' to be in place in whatever distro you use them in. Snaps are a Canonical thing; Flatpaks are being more widely adopted by the greater Linux community, but due to the above-mentioned 'framework', I fail to understand how they CAN be considered 'portable'.

Both do contain everything they need to run, and their main claim to fame is that of isolating the app from the host OS by sandboxing it. This is true of AppImages, yet you can happily move an AppImage from one distro to another, click on it to run it and it should fire up. AppImages only require that fusermount be on the system.....'fuse' being an acronym for 'filesystem in user-space'. An AppImage creates its own 'virtual file-system' in /tmp for the duration, interacting with the kernel from that location.

===================================

Common-place or not, the one thing all these different implementations have in common is creating a fresh batch of config files in every distro you run them in. Which struck me as incredibly untidy, since if you run a given AppImage in 20 different distros, you end up with 20 sets of the same identical config stuff.....which then gets left behind when you move on to another distro and take the AppImage with you! Plus you have to set it all up again from scratch every time you run it.....

In the Windoze world, these are catered for by the PortableApps.com website. And these have the right idea; the config stuff is also contained within the portable directory, so having set-up a PortableApp the way you like it, you can shut it down, unplug' em from the system - the recommended way to run these is from a flash drive - go to another machine/version of Windows, plug the drive back in again, fire it up and just carry on where you left off!

I did just this for my very last annual re-install of XP, more than a decade ago; instead of installing stuff as normal, I outfitted the system entirely with PortableApps. It was the smoothest, most glitch-free year I'd ever had, mainly due to the fact that PortableApps also contain their own 'mini-registry', and don't write to the system at all.....

.....and this is what I wanted to achieve in Puppy once I started experimenting, Fred having demonstrated it was perfectly "do-able" in Linux. An application you could run in one Puppy, shut-down, boot into another Puppy, fire it up again and just carry on with whatever you were doing....

I 'share' Puppy-portables between multiple Pups by running them from an 'external' data partition (my system has 2 storage drives; one just for Puppy stuff, and the other for pretty much everything else). You can achieve exactly the same effect by running them from a suitably-formatted flash-drive/external HDD/external SSD.

Mike.

So it looks like AppImage is the closest thing to portable apps.
Can you tell me which distros your portable apps will definitely run on? Do your portable apps run on EasyOS, for example?

[mikeslr]

@Governor "Does it mean Mike's portables will work on LinuxMint using this method?"

No. But maybe-- see below.

The attached recipe is to create a Desktop File and Launcher for an AppImage you find and download. For example, googling 'Brave browser AppImage" will generate a link to https://github.com/srevinsaju/Brave-AppImage. On the Right of that post is a Section named "Releases". At the top of that you'll see " Brave AppImage Stable v1.64.116 Latest" Clicking Latest takes you here, https://github.com/srevinsaju/Brave-App ... /v1.64.116 where under Assets you'll find one ending in "AppImage".

Download it. Don't forget to make it executable. You can probably edit it's name to just "Brave.AppImage". The recipe says to put the AppImage in your Home Folder. The rest of the recipe explains how to create a /usr/share/applications desktop file which adds it to the Menu.

The recipe was written for Linux Mint. It should work under any 'Ubuntu-based' distro, probably also any 'Debian-based'. If not those, something similar may work.

AFAICT, the reason Mike's portables don't work under 'Major Distros' is that its Launch Script and 'MenuAdd' scripts 'speak' Puppy's version of Bash and the 'Majors' speak there own. But some of Mike's portables already include an AppImage and are structured to use it. Those AppImages have already had their names 'truncated'. For example, his LibreOffice-porable. So rather than having to 'google/find' an Appimage, you can just steal it from Mike's portables, then follow the Recipe. But remember, those Appimages can't be updated. You're better off finding the newest version from time-to-time, downloading it, truncating its name, making it executable and swapping it for the old one.

[Governor]

I'll try this out.
Thanks!

@Governor "Does it mean Mike's portables will work on LinuxMint using this method?"

No. But maybe-- see below.

The attached recipe is to create a Desktop File and Launcher for an AppImage you find and download. For example, googling 'Brave browser AppImage" will generate a link to https://github.com/srevinsaju/Brave-AppImage. On the Right of that post is a Section named "Releases". At the top of that you'll see " Brave AppImage Stable v1.64.116 Latest" Clicking Latest takes you here, https://github.com/srevinsaju/Brave-App ... /v1.64.116 where under Assets you'll find one ending in "AppImage".

Download it. Don't forget to make it executable. You can probably edit it's name to just "Brave.AppImage". The recipe says to put the AppImage in your Home Folder. The rest of the recipe explains how to create a /usr/share/applications desktop file which adds it to the Menu.

The recipe was written for Linux Mint. It should work under any 'Ubuntu-based' distro, probably also any 'Debian-based'. If not those, something similar may work.

AFAICT, the reason Mike's portables don't work under 'Major Distros' is that its Launch Script and 'MenuAdd' scripts 'speak' Puppy's version of Bash and the 'Majors' speak there own. But some of Mike's portables already include an AppImage and are structured to use it. Those AppImages have already had their names 'truncated'. For example, his LibreOffice-porable. So rather than having to 'google/find' an Appimage, you can just steal it from Mike's portables, then follow the Recipe. But remember, those Appimages can't be updated. You're better off finding the newest version from time-to-time, downloading it, truncating its name, making it executable and swapping it for the old one.

[geo_c]

@Governor, I respect your desire to ignore my posts as coming from a persona non grata, so the following information is for the general benefit of the forum:

It's actually very easy to use any appimage known to work well with a given OS and manually create a "portable" from it.

After downloading the appimage, making it executable, and locating it in a consistently available location to your commonly used OS's, simply do a first run of the appimage application and let it create it's config files in your /root directory.

Once the config files are created, copy those files/folders into the directory where the appimage is located, then delete the originals from /root, and symlink them back to root from the appimage directory.

Here is an example of LibreWolf appimage. The /root/.librewolf directory containing the user profiles was first created on the first run of LibreWolf, then copied to /mnt/home/portableAPP/LibreWolf-img/ and symlinked back into /root. Every new OS I run LibreWolf appimage from only needs to have the folder /mnt/home/portableAPP/LibreWolf-img/.librewolf symlinked to /root before running LibreWolf, and all my configurations, history, bookmarks, etc will be present. So this LibreWolf instance stays up to date and in sync whether using KLV-airedale, or F96, or fossapup64_9.5. All that was required after initially copying the config folder to the portableAPP folder was to symlink the /.librewolf folder to /root.

And btw, LibreWolf appimage has run flawlessly on every OS I've ever booted.

[mikewalsh]

@Governor / @geo_c :-

If you follow geo_c's instructions, Governor - putting the AppImage in a uniquely-named directory - here's a 'generic' launch script to put alongside it:-

Code: Select all

#!/bin/sh
#
Laucher for 'your AppImage'
#
HERE="$(dirname "$(readlink -f "$0")")"
#
XDG_CONFIG_HOME=
XDG_CACHE_HOME=
XDG_DATA_HOME=
HOME="$HERE"
#
"$HERE/name-of-your-AppImage" "$@" # make sure to change the name to exactly match that of your AppImage

By using the XDG directory protocols:-

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/XDG_Base_Directory
https://specifications.freedesktop.org/ ... atest.html

.....instead of needing to sym-link stuff back into /root - MochiMoppel gave me a wee tutorial on the use of this stuff (thanks, Mochi!) - your AppImage will then create all the '.hidden' config directories and config files directly within the 'portable' directory, AND read from/write to them from that location.

Remember to make your script executable.....and I usually just call it 'LAUNCH', as you probably know.

EDIT:- Attached below as a 'fake' .gz file. Just delete the '.gz' from the end...

Mike.