[SOLVED] Will 4MLinux ever support AppImages, Flatpaks, & Snaps?
4MLinuxThis forum is for the discussion of 4MLinux.
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Appimages and the like are not supposed to need system support, but be self contained. That's the whole point of them. People only bother when the dependencies are horrendous, or next to impossible to find/compile.
That said, some guys compile these on, for example a RH system, test them on a RH system, and release them. They the barf big time on something like Arch or Slackware, which is set up differently, uses different lib versions, etc.
Let’s take AppImages as an example (they are the simplest). The idea behind them is that they should work under any Linux distro. Download an image, make it executable (chmod 755), double click on it, and your program should be opened. No matter what distro you are using.
The problem is that AppImages expect that your distro includes a wide set of various libraries that are present in mainstream distributions like Debian. If a library is missing, your program will not start.
If I start to add new libraries (one by one) required by AppImages, my 4MLinux will soon became a new (fat) Debian. But, as you know, my idea is to maintain a small, extremely fast distro with a well defined limited set of features.
Let’s take AppImages as an example (they are the simplest). The idea behind them is that they should work under any Linux distro. Download an image, make it executable (chmod 755), double click on it, and your program should be opened. No matter what distro you are using.
The problem is that AppImages expect that your distro includes a wide set of various libraries that are present in mainstream distributions like Debian. If a library is missing, your program will not start.
If I start to add new libraries (one by one) required by AppImages, my 4MLinux will soon became a new (fat) Debian. But, as you know, my idea is to maintain a small, extremely fast distro with a well defined limited set of features.
I don't think you need be slave to the small/light concept these days.
In the past, small, light software actually made a huge difference, but not now, even with a weak & gutless PC (pretty much like mine). I have firefox,palemoon libreoffice & a library program open, and me memory usage is 1.25G. Run a sensible Window manager, don't install junk, but you needn't fuss about libs imho. Even opening 860Megs of AppImages only increased the memory footprint by 200Megs, showing that linux has efficient memory usage. My last box was an AMD twin Turion Northbridge/Southbridge thing with 4 Gigs. One Gig died, which reduced it to 3. But it still ran fine.
If you're running a single arm7 core and 1G, then maybe. But most pcs breeze through what older pcs struggled to do.
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