Some ago in the world of Gnu / Linux we had a universal method of installing any application regardless of the distribution in question and this method was by compiling the application from its source code.
This method is still used, it tends to be a bit lateIn addition to that for users new to Linux and even intermediate users it may be a bit complicated to do this.
Already being a little more specific most distributions use some package manager with which they are supported for the installation of applications, say for example Debian or Ubuntu with apt and deb or Fedora packages with yum and rpm packages.
With which we already find applications in the most popular package formats and they save us a lot of time with the installation since we do not need to compile it on our system.
Ago not long time new types of packages have started to emerge to install applications, for example, Snap, Appimage or Flatpak.
Where the main attraction of some of these is that they run in an environment totally isolated from the system, with which we will not have problems of corrupting the system or compromising it.
About AppImageLauncher
This time we will focus on packages in AppImage format which even many users do not know how to install them and even how to integrate them into our system.
When we download an AppImage package to install it we must give it installation permissions and execute the following command to install it:
./paquete.appimage
Which will confirm that we are going to install the application, at the end of this we are asked if we want the application to be integrated into our application menu or if we want to create a shortcut.
Where many of the users tend to say no without knowing or by mistake. To run the application later we must do it from the file that we downloaded.
However We also have a tool that can facilitate this, this tool is called AppImageLauncher.
Application allows you to easily run AppImage files, without having to make them executable.
AppImageLauncher for now It only has support for Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Debian, Netrunner and has recently added support for openSUSE.
But its most interesting feature is to easily integrate AppImages with your system: AppImageLauncher can automatically add a shortcut to the AppImage application to the menu / application launcher of your desktop environment (including the application icon and appropriate description).
How does AppImageLauncher work?
When We download an application in appimage, just double click on it to run AppImageLauncher and this will present us with several options.
The first ones that will be presented to you when you are going to install the application for the first time are:
Run once or Integrate and run.
Clicking integrate and run, the application in the AppImage is copied to the ~ /.bin / folder and added to the menu, then the application is started.
The other options that it presents to you when an application is already installed are:
Delete or update the application.
If we want to eliminate the application, it is just as simple, as long as the desktop environment you are using is compatible with the desktop actions.
While to update you should be presented with the option when you run AppImageLauncher again on an updated appimage of the application that you already have installed on the system.
For example, in Gnome Shell, simply right-click the application icon in the Activities Overview and select Remove from System:
How to install AppImageLauncher on Linux?
As I mentioned the compatibility of AppImageLauncher, although it can also be used in derivatives we must take into account that its compatibility depends on the desktop environment where Gnome Shell or Cinnamon are the most suitable.
Only you must go to the following link y download the package for your distribution Linux.
In the case of Debian, Ubuntu and derivatives, to install it we only have to position ourselves in the folder where the package was downloaded and execute:
sudo dpkg -i appimagelauncher*.rpm
While for Ubuntu 18.04 in particular we have a package:
sudo dpkg -i appimagelauncher*.rpm
For openSUSE:
sudo rpm -i appimagelauncher*.rpm
It gives the error: error while loading shared libraries: libQt5DBus.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
They should tell what dependencies it has or from which repository to download it so that it does everything by itself, the put * that gave you a thousand births.
It is impossible for anyone to notify you of all the dependencies that each program needs
They can show how to do it from antix linux, use icewm and I find it a bit complicated, please.