Tar.gz and tar.xz are products of compression applications which combine the entire contents of a folder into one file which can safely be transmitted: gz and xz are different compression techniques, each with its own advantages/disadvantages. ‘Tar’, itself, merely creates one uncompressed file containing all the files of a directory. They are often used by Mikewalsh and others to publish an entire portable application, all the executables and all their dependencies so that once ‘unpacked’ the application folder can be located anywhere and the application run from that location. Mikewalsh’s extensive collection of such portables can be found here, https://www.forum.puppylinux.com/viewto ... 734#p48734. To a large extent each will run under any recent Puppy with the ‘right’ architecture, i.e. 64-bit vs. 32-bit.
There are bash-commands for unpacking a tar.gz or tar.xz. But my mind works visually; remembering bash-commands is an ‘up-hill’ battle. And some of the steps to put a portable to use are easier to do manually. So this is the procedure I use.
Step 0: Locate the desired tar.gz/xz using your web-browser and download it. Unless you’ve configured your web-browser otherwise it’s likely to end up in /root/Downloads. From there I usually move it to a location where I later test it and don’t have to worry if I forget to Save my work before turning the computer off.
- Steps-1-to-4.png (138.12 KiB) Viewed 760 times
Step 1 of the graphics shows the Google-Chrome-portable.gz in /home/my-stuff/temp3.
Step 2: Right-click the tar.gz/xz and from the pop-up Menu select one of the tools for decompressing such file. The illustration shows three tools that can be used: UExtract, pExtract and Xarchiver. Many Puppys have UExtract ‘built-in’. When not, I always install it because JakeSFR has constructed it to work with many types of files, See https://www.forum.puppylinux.com/viewto ... 3263#p3263.
Step 3: Follow the on-screen instructions. Using UExtract an ‘Application’.tar.gz/xz-extracted folder will be created next to the ‘tar.gz/xz’. In the illustration, it’s the Google_Chrome-portable.tar.gz.extracted folder.
Step 4: Right-Click that folder, and within you’ll see another folder with just the name of the application and the suffix ‘portable’.
Step 5: In the illustration, it’s the Google_Chrome-portable.
- Finishing.png (59.3 KiB) Viewed 760 times
Step 6: Open a 2nd File-manager Window to where you will want to run the portable from. Left-PRESS, Hold the ‘portable’ folder then drag it into the Window where you want to run it from. From the Pop-Up menu select Move.
[That can be anywhere. There are two locations I regularly use: some folder on /mnt/home and /opt. /mnt/home is the partition automatically mounted on boot-up when you employ a SaveFile/Folder; so all its contents are immediately available. When not in use, Portables run from /mnt/home do not use any RAM other than the little required to create menu entries if you choose to (discussed below). For convenience, I locate all portables in a folder named ‘Pup-Apps’ on /mnt/home –right-click an empty space, select New>Diretory and give it a name-- and book-mark that folder. Portables located in /opt do use RAM. But employing the Save2SFS module of nicOS-Utility-Suite, https://www.forum.puppylinux.com/viewto ... 14#p127314, the portable can be included in either an adrv.sfs or ydrv.sfs and be available even if you boot ‘pfix=ram’, that is without mounting the SaveFile/Folder and any partition].
Contents of the Portable-Folder as shown in the illustration:
Right-click the portable folder and you’ll see such files/folders as In the illustration. You can always start the application by Left-Clicking the LAUNCH bash-script; even if you are running ‘pfix=ram’. There won’t be a ‘profiles’ folder until you run the application. The profiles folder is designed to store your configuration files and any bookmarks and Addons/extensions you install; and any changes you make to those.
The Menu-Add and Menu-Remove do what you expect when Left-Clicked. If you’ve have a Menu-listing you can also create a desktop and/or panel launcher.
Some portables –such as Google_Chrome-- contain a Left-Clickable ‘update’ script which does what it says. Some, like firefox, can be updated from within the running application: Toolbar>...>Help>About Firefox
And some can’t be updated.
