Support for AppImage about fbs

[mherrmann]

Why? Are .deb, .pkg.tar.xz, .rpm not enough? What about automatic updates?

[dridk]

I think from the user end perspective, It's really appreciate to download and run the AppImage directly regardless linux distribution.

For instance, krita:
https://krita.org/fr/telechargement/krita-desktop/

[mherrmann]

Sorry but I still don't understand: For a user who's on Ubuntu, why is an AppImage so much better than a .deb? In my eyes the only advantage of AppImages are that they are (supposed to) run everywhere. But they're larger binaries. They don't integrate into the native package manager. So there are no automatic updates. They're an extra dependency. Using them, one has to deal with new issues such as sandboxing. I just fail to see what's so great about them - under the assumption that a native package exists.

[patrickelectric]

@mherrmann the points is that you don't need to deploy .dev, .pkg or .rpm. You can just share an appimage or a snap package. This makes easier for new users to run programs.

[mherrmann]

@patrickelectric to install App.deb, the user

1. Downloads it
2. Executes sudo dpkg -i App.deb.

To install App.AppImage, the user

1. Downloads it
2. Executes chmod +x App.AppImage.

How is that easier? How does it justify the drawbacks I mentioned above?

[patrickelectric]

but the appimage step will work for any Linux, It's just easier to deploy one thing than a package for each OS. Just pointing.

[mherrmann]

You're right it may be easier for me as the app developer. But (as I said above) I don't think it's easier for the user.

[mherrmann]

I'm closing this issue for now because I don't feel like there are sufficient reasons for creating an AppImage at this point, where .deb, .rpm and .pkg.tar.xz are already available.

[dridk]

One last reason : You need root privilege to install deb or rpm.

[mherrmann]

You need root privilege to install deb or rpm.

Not really. You can also just extract the contents of a .deb say and copy it somewhere else. See eg. fman-users/fman/issues/572.

[mherrmann]

Actually, I should do this differently. I'm not forever opposed to supporting AppImages. I think they have valid use cases, especially on little-used Linux distributions. My point in the other issue was that I feel they don't have enough benefits over a native package such as an .rpm to justify their implementation at this point. I'll re-open a new issue for AppImages in a little while to document this, and that AppImages will likely be implemented in the future.