[SOLVED] Any portable launcher app for AppImages?

[Mintymandy34]

I used PortableApps.com launcher in Windows for launching and organising all sorts of small portable utilities.
https://portableapps.com/

I tried to use LinuxPA but couldn't manage to use it.
https://github.com/CalebQ42/LinuxPA

I'm starting to use a lot of AppImages and would want to launch them from a single portable launcher application.
Is there an application for that available in Linux Mint?

If not, has anybody ever found a solution this?
Any alternative way to launch AppImages?

SOLUTION:
Try AppImageLauncher.
This will help you easily integrate AppImages with your system.
You can get it from here.
And install release builds only, continuous builds didn't work for me.
Then you can use Plank or Docky to pin those AppImages to the dock and use the dock like a launcher.

However, I couldn't find anything exactly like PortableApps.com launcher.

[Hoser Rob]

Haven't done this myself because I only use one appimage and I just keep it in my Desktop folder and execute it from there. But I did a bit of searching and that app you're talking about doesn't really look all that well developed.

At the appimage.org site (see their guide at https://docs.appimage.org/user-guide/run-appimages.html) they recommend AppImageLauncher. There's a link with 32 and 64 bit .deb file dls here:

https://github.com/TheAssassin/AppImage ... r/releases

I wouldn't expect any of them to work like the Windows program though.

[Mintymandy34]

Haven't done this myself because I only use one appimage and I just keep it in my Desktop folder and execute it from there. But I did a bit of searching and that app you're talking about doesn't really look all that well developed.

At the appimage.org site (see their guide at https://docs.appimage.org/user-guide/run-appimages.html) they recommend AppImageLauncher. There's a link with 32 and 64 bit .deb file dls here:

https://github.com/TheAssassin/AppImage ... r/releases

I wouldn't expect any of them to work like the Windows program though.

Thanks for info.

[Mintymandy34]

At the appimage.org site (see their guide at https://docs.appimage.org/user-guide/run-appimages.html) they recommend AppImageLauncher. There's a link with 32 and 64 bit .deb file dls here:

AppImageLauncher will actually integrate with the system which kinda is my problem.
I need one that doesn't integrate anything with the system (I'm just afraid that it'll break anything in the system )
And would installing deb files from their site would be a good idea?

[Mintymandy34]

At the appimage.org site (see their guide at https://docs.appimage.org/user-guide/run-appimages.html) they recommend AppImageLauncher. There's a link with 32 and 64 bit .deb file dls here:

https://github.com/TheAssassin/AppImage ... r/releases

There are 4 deb files, should I install the bionic_amd64 one?

[Hoser Rob]

At the appimage.org site (see their guide at https://docs.appimage.org/user-guide/run-appimages.html) they recommend AppImageLauncher. There's a link with 32 and 64 bit .deb file dls here:

https://github.com/TheAssassin/AppImage ... r/releases

There are 4 deb files, should I install the bionic_amd64 one?

Yes, unless you installed the 32 bit version of Mint.

There are always some risks when installing from non tested repo sources. Right click on the file, select install with gdebi, and READ THE MESSAGES you get. If it tells you it's going to remove things in the process of installing, stop.

[Mintymandy34]

At the appimage.org site (see their guide at https://docs.appimage.org/user-guide/run-appimages.html) they recommend AppImageLauncher. There's a link with 32 and 64 bit .deb file dls here:

https://github.com/TheAssassin/AppImage ... r/releases

There are 4 deb files, should I install the bionic_amd64 one?

Yes, unless you installed the 32 bit version of Mint.

There are always some risks when installing from non tested repo sources. Right click on the file, select install with gdebi, and READ THE MESSAGES you get. If it tells you it's going to remove things in the process of installing, stop.

It just said, "All dependencies satisfied", and I've 64 bit version of Mint.
I did install, but after that I couldn't find it in the Software Manager or anywhere.
Launching the deb file again says it's already installed.
Is that normal?

[Mintymandy34]

There are always some risks when installing from non tested repo sources. Right click on the file, select install with gdebi, and READ THE MESSAGES you get. If it tells you it's going to remove things in the process of installing, stop.

It didn't tell me about removing anything.
However now I can't run any AppImage by clicking on them, along with making them executable.
I guess, it's try to run them through that launcher but failing cause I'm no seeing anything opening up.

[Mintymandy34]

There are always some risks when installing from non tested repo sources. Right click on the file, select install with gdebi, and READ THE MESSAGES you get. If it tells you it's going to remove things in the process of installing, stop.

It's a mess now.
I can't run any AppImage.
I found the AppImage Launcher app in the Software Manager and uninstalled from there but nothing changed.
I also found some folders in the Filesystem named appimagelauncher and appimagelauncherd.service, and I seem to think these leftover files might be creating the conflict.
Do you know of any way I could completely remove/purge the installation of that software?
That would be really helpful.

Note: I'm quite unsure what the real problem is, just try to test all ends.

[Mintymandy34]

https://github.com/TheAssassin/AppImage ... r/releases

I wouldn't expect any of them to work like the Windows program though.

I did successfully uninstall it and it was actually creating some problems, maybe cause it's in testing phase.
Will try that in VM and let you know about my findings.
Thanks for the suggestion.
I think I can make it work eventually.

[Mintymandy34]

Haven't done this myself because I only use one appimage and I just keep it in my Desktop folder and execute it from there. But I did a bit of searching and that app you're talking about doesn't really look all that well developed.

At the appimage.org site (see their guide at https://docs.appimage.org/user-guide/run-appimages.html) they recommend AppImageLauncher. There's a link with 32 and 64 bit .deb file dls here:

https://github.com/TheAssassin/AppImage ... r/releases

I wouldn't expect any of them to work like the Windows program though.

Thanks, I made it work.
It has integrated with my Mint system, and I really like this.

However, I still crave for something like Portableapps launcher, something that keeps things segregated.
Still, thanks for AppImageLauncher, handy tool, has its use.

[redlined]

you do have some interesting conversations! (reminds me of me

I have been a huge fan of portable apps, going way way back in time, and amassed quite a collection of them from all over.

and appimage is basically portable apps. I see you had trouble with appimagelauncher (it is what I recommend as well!) it does help by making launchers (shortcuts) in your mint menu, as well making it easy to stay on top of appimage updates. Otherwise it keeps thing segregated, just adds some shortcuts and appimage menu items for easier care and maintenance.

The tricky thing is to set where you want appimages stored (and I would recommend using the full integration with appimagelauncher), I want it in ~/Apps not /tmp/.bin (with ~/ meaning /home, I just don't want persistent stuff in /tmp as I load that in ram to conserve on ssd writes)

also, heed this note:

Ubuntu trusty (14.04) and newer
Important: Ubuntu bionic (and newer) broke with the backwards compatibility of its libcurl packages, therefore users of these systems need to install the special bionic package

we are ubuntu 18.04 base, so grab their bionic marked .deb for install. so, this one, from current release:
https://github.com/TheAssassin/AppImage ... _amd64.deb

and yes, gdebi-gtk reports already installed once it finishes installing some package for the first time (and every time after;).

[Mintymandy34]

you do have some interesting conversations! (reminds me of me

Thanks, maybe.

I have been a huge fan of portable apps, going way way back in time, and amassed quite a collection of them from all over.

Was searching for you, really.
Was thinking of posting a topic like, "Has somebody got plenty experience with AppImages, teach me".
And can you please share that collection, I've hard time finding AppImages.
I currently use these 3 sites:
https://appimage.github.io/apps/
https://bintray.com/probono/AppImages
https://dl.bintray.com/probono/AppImages/

The tricky thing is to set where you want appimages stored (and I would recommend using the full integration with appimagelauncher), I want it in ~/Apps not /tmp/.bin (with ~/ meaning /home, I just don't want persistent stuff in /tmp as I load that in ram to conserve on ssd writes)

Yeah, about that, the launcher I got, it directed all apps into ~/Applications by default.

we are ubuntu 18.04 base, so grab their bionic marked .deb for install. so, this one, from current release:
https://github.com/TheAssassin/AppImage ... _amd64.deb

and yes, gdebi-gtk reports already installed once it finishes installing some package for the first time (and every time after;).

Thanks, yes, I found out this.
This was helpful.
Really helpful, I use plank to launch these AppImages and use AppImageLauncher to integrate with the system.
Would love to know your workflow.

[redlined]

redlined wrote: ⤴
Today, 12:42
I have been a huge fan of portable apps, going way way back in time, and amassed quite a collection of them from all over.

Was searching for you, really.
Was thinking of posting a topic like, "Has somebody got plenty experience with AppImages, teach me".
And can you please share that collection, I've hard time finding AppImages.

I wasn't very clear, last March was my first actual venture into the world of Linux, all my portable collecting was the preceding 25yrs in Windows. I do look through both those sites you linked at times, (and https://appimage.org = https://github.com/probonopd and refer to https://appimage.github.io/ for his crowdsourced listing dev) but really I try to stay closer to home with native repos and lp:ppa's.

When I do chase down an app I want, and no good looking/safe repo/ppa alternative then I look for dev release of an appimage (which I prefer over flatpak, for example). Right now I have very few appimages in use, one for nheko (matrix chat client), bitwarden (password manager) and FFpassword exporter (needed to get my passwords out of FF sync and into bitwarden local and sync:) I've had up to about a dozen appimages before, but either find something better or install package into system for better integration was decisions made.

Otherwise I tend to run appimage when I am unsure if I want to fully integrate some package, or if dependencies conflict and I don't want to concern over breaking something else needing a newer or older package, etc. I don't really use them as my old "have USB; will travel" road-warrior days are over. I prefer a multi-OS live session with persistence usb stick for that (and do stash some windows portable apps on it)

Really helpful, I use plank to launch these AppImages and use AppImageLauncher to integrate with the system.
Would love to know your workflow.

workflow? (I'd be banned from forums should I begin to describe my messy way of doing things in more detail than below

left side panel for most applets I use (a considerable number, think xmas tree, like my browser addon list, but with symbolic icons;)

top panel for menu, weather, windows list, systray, calendar and couple startup/monitor type applets.

and... a bottom dock for launchers. Plank, wanted to love it, just couldn't. Found docky, loved it, it broke, went to cairo, enjoyed tinkering with it for a long time- started having issues and retried docky and fell back in love with the old piece of code that still works fine for my needs- but basically same as plank with a bit more polish (iirc, it's a fork of plank)

Otherwise, getting smart and collecting plugins (actions/scripts) for nemo and similar such where supported. also really desiring to jump into conky and start playing with it, real bad (had a brain melt last summer trying to sort it:D)
and trying to stay in terminal as much as possible for doing things and getting it done, man packagename, tldr packagename, cheat packagename and eg packagename, after -? --help proves to be insufficient (for my brain)
oh, and Alt+f2 for seeing what I can drum up quick with that trick

right now I'm killing myself trying to jimmy in a safe tor mid-relay to my networked mess of vpn's proxies iptables filters and dns control options etc ad nauseam , resolvconf must die, long live openresolv

[Mintymandy34]

... but really I try to stay closer to home with native repos and lp:ppa's.

I will do that too.

When I do chase down an app I want, and no good looking/safe repo/ppa alternative then I look for dev release of an appimage (which I prefer over flatpak, for example).

How unsafe are dev releases of AppImages, in a scale of one to ten?

Right now I have very few appimages in use, one for nheko (matrix chat client), bitwarden (password manager) and FFpassword exporter (needed to get my passwords out of FF sync and into bitwarden local and sync:) I've had up to about a dozen appimages before, but either find something better or install package into system for better integration was decisions made.

You deliver so much intel, I just love it.
Though I'm not smart enough to start using them now, I'll eventually switch to them.

Otherwise I tend to run appimage when I am unsure if I want to fully integrate some package, or if dependencies conflict and I don't want to concern over breaking something else needing a newer or older package, etc.

Same reason as mine.

... I prefer a multi-OS live session with persistence usb stick for that (and do stash some windows portable apps on it)

How do you do that?
I used YUMI but that wasn't compatible with Secure Boot, hence ended up using Rufus but it ain't supporting multiboot.

left side panel for most applets I use (a considerable number, think xmas tree, like my browser addon list, but with symbolic icons;)
top panel for menu, weather, windows list, systray, calendar and couple startup/monitor type applets.
and... a bottom dock for launchers.

Okay, that's some workflow.
It's great, but my brain will need a lot of time for adjusting with that.
Have you uploaded anywhere like in Linux Mint Desktop Screenshots subforum where I can a get a look at it?

Plank, wanted to love it, just couldn't. Found docky, loved it, it broke, went to cairo, enjoyed tinkering with it for a long time- started having issues and retried docky and fell back in love with the old piece of code that still works fine for my needs- but basically same as plank with a bit more polish (iirc, it's a fork of plank)

Started with Plank, couldn't find its configuration settings () and switched to Docky, found it simplistic, switched to Cairo, it was like KDE on drugs for a dock, so much features that my brain kinda freezed, decided to go back to Plank as it had least memory consumption.
Didn't know Docky was a fork of Plank.
Will give it a try.

and trying to stay in terminal as much as possible for doing things and getting it done, man packagename, tldr packagename, cheat packagename and eg packagename, after -? --help proves to be insufficient (for my brain)

I'm not so confident of terminal usage but I'm learning slowly but steadily.
Using tldr, thef@ck (no seriously, I'm not trying to swear, it's a real package I found in Software Manager that when I do a wrong command and type f@ck, it corrects me).
If you don't mind, can you please share the productivity tools you use for terminal? (like cheat, I just installed it).

oh, and Alt+f2 for seeing what I can drum up quick with that trick

Couldn't get this one?
Pressing Alt + F2 in my system opens up a search bar. 🥺

right now I'm killing myself trying to jimmy in a safe tor mid-relay to my networked mess of vpn's proxies iptables filters and dns control options etc ad nauseam , resolvconf must die, long live openresolv

That all just went way over my head.


Thanks for your reply, it really helps me a lot.

[Mintymandy34]

... started having issues and retried docky and fell back in love with the old piece of code that still works fine for my needs- but basically same as plank with a bit more polish (iirc, it's a fork of plank)

Tried Docky, quite amazed, but there's a tiny problem which is quite big for my workflow.
In Plank, I could tell it to show only pinned icons, so that the dock was not cluttered with everything I opened.
I can't seem to find any such configuration option over Docky.

Let me know if you've any idea about this.

[redlined]

... started having issues and retried docky and fell back in love with the old piece of code that still works fine for my needs- but basically same as plank with a bit more polish (iirc, it's a fork of plank)

Tried Docky, quite amazed, but there's a tiny problem which is quite big for my workflow.
In Plank, I could tell it to show only pinned icons, so that the dock was not cluttered with everything I opened.
I can't seem to find any such configuration option over Docky.

Let me know if you've any idea about this.

yah, I cannot recall how I got that changed and looking at config again it appears to be a locked setting (greyed out) and checked/enabled for Manage WIndows WIthout Launcher (from Docky settings, bottom of Docks tab) but I did get it disabled somehow, once I pinned opened apps to the dock that I wanted to add (can also drag-n-drop launchers from desktop. It was nice when I wanted to drop windows list and such from main panel, but I changed stuff on panel to better list there and stopped in on docky...

another thing I found useful, waybackmachine to their go-docky website (which seems lost otherwise). oh, and one of my favorite tools, dconf-editor (read the caution on open, and just be mindful while traipsing around in there;) but this may help tweak it up more to your liking, should you venture back to docky:
https://web.archive.org/web/20180313070 ... tings.html

I'll also mention, I do not use docky for much more than a better (and autohidden) launcher spot, except for couple of docklets offered on that tab. Always thought the helper script thing would be awesome, but never pursued sorting it, iirc some nasty and/or long out-dated dependencies in recent distro releases. As you can see, even latest release in launchpad is nearing 4 years back, sadly

[Mintymandy34]

yah, I cannot recall how I got that changed and looking at config again it appears to be a locked setting (greyed out) and checked/enabled for Manage WIndows WIthout Launcher (from Docky settings, bottom of Docks tab) but I did get it disabled somehow, once I pinned opened apps to the dock that I wanted to add (can also drag-n-drop launchers from desktop. It was nice when I wanted to drop windows list and such from main panel, but I changed stuff on panel to better list there and stopped in on docky...

Yeah, I need to learn better panel management, last night I accidentally cleared a lot of my icons and it was quite a mess adding them back.

another thing I found useful, waybackmachine to their go-docky website (which seems lost otherwise). oh, and one of my favorite tools, dconf-editor (read the caution on open, and just be mindful while traipsing around in there;) but this may help tweak it up more to your liking, should you venture back to docky:
https://web.archive.org/web/20180313070 ... tings.html

That's a huge list of settings in there.
I'll use that.

I'll also mention, I do not use docky for much more than a better (and autohidden) launcher spot, except for couple of docklets offered on that tab. Always thought the helper script thing would be awesome, but never pursued sorting it, iirc some nasty and/or long out-dated dependencies in recent distro releases. As you can see, even latest release in launchpad is nearing 4 years back, sadly

Did the project just die?
That's sad indeed.

[redlined]

Yeah, I need to learn better panel management, last night I accidentally cleared a lot of my icons and it was quite a mess adding them back.

take care of switching from traditional to modern panel layouts, it can get ugly with time invested

Did the project just die?
That's sad indeed.

I consider it abandoned, xenial timeframe at launchpad with a few years of unaddressed bugs piling up. I haven't looked hard though, nor sought any dev out on the irc channel mentioned. Look in answers section though, for tips, like this old thread: https://answers.launchpad.net/docky/+question/160921

I think that helped me sort how to get that Manage windows behavior toggled when I was seeking it before. and I must have done it in dconf-editor though, since I do not have a second dock(y) to relieve the main one of the task (nor recall setting one up temporarily, even to enable/disable behavior) I do not consider docky a panel replacement though.

and that docky dconf setting page will probably tip off the fact that dconf-editor is my (not so secret) best troublemaking friend

[Mintymandy34]

take care of switching from traditional to modern panel layouts, it can get ugly with time invested

Not sure, maybe I'm missing something.
Are you talking about the traditional desktop layout vs modern layout that was offered in Mint First Steps?
Never used traditional ones, are they advantageous over the modern ones?

Look in answers section though, for tips, like this old thread: https://answers.launchpad.net/docky/+question/160921

Thanks for that link.

I think that helped me sort how to get that Manage windows behavior toggled when I was seeking it before. and I must have done it in dconf-editor though, since I do not have a second dock(y) to relieve the main one of the task (nor recall setting one up temporarily, even to enable/disable behavior) I do not consider docky a panel replacement though.

Same here, I don't consider a dock as a panel replacement.
I use panels for general preferred applications, tray and menu, whereas use the dock for workflow applications.
In the old days when I was only using the panel, I had to decrease the size of the icons cause I've been using a lot of applications and it quickly got crammed up there.
So, I decided to use a dock along with the panel.

and that docky dconf setting page will probably tip off the fact that dconf-editor is my (not so secret) best troublemaking friend

Had a hunch from your last response.
Will try dconf-editor, in VM first.
Thanks.