cross posted from https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=71968
More detail follows.

Initially I tried to avoid using the direct download appimages from freecadweb.org but being new to the operating system I had no luck in installing FreeCAD from slackbuilds.org.

The whole purpose of moving to Slackware from Linux Mint was to ensure a secure and stable environment so that I could gain competency with FreeCAD and help build a better tomorrow.

I feel the stability fine; the system does not go into a kernal panic (almost) every time I shutdown like it used to with Mint, but running FreeCAD as sudo is a problem.

Operating System: Slackware 15.0
KDE Plasma Version: 5.23.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.90.0
Qt Version: 5.15.3
Kernel Version: 5.15.38 (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 2 × Intel® Core™2 Duo CPU E7500 @ 2.93GHz
Memory: 3.7 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: Mesa DRI Intel® G41

You may notice that I've not upgraded the kernal from that which was supplied by the live USB version of Slackware 15. This is because I am a coward and don't want to deal with the lilo dark magic, but, if that is the issue that is causing the appimages to fail to launch I will get to grips with it.

Just so you know, I have other appimages of tutanota, obsidian and remnote that launch without issue.

In truth, I'd much prefer a nice stable install from source with all the assistance I can muster to the cause.

Haven't ever used FreeCAD, but I downloaded the appimage and it starts just fine without sudo. OK, I'm on a fully upgraded -current, not slackware-15, but I doubt that's what make the difference.

Just a thought - what are the permissions for your appimage file? It ought to be -rwxr-xr-x allowing all users to run the file. If you for some reason downloaded it as root, it might be that you don't have permission to run it as user, only as owner.

BTW, there's no lilo black magic, and since you seem to think about security, you should upgrade the kernel when there are security-related upgrades. In slackware-15 (stable), kernels are upgraded for a reason.

It launches and runs fine here on Slackware 15. Do you make it executable? If so, what errors do you get when launching from the terminal?

1 members found this post helpful.

The tricky part with installing applications from SlackBuilds.org is that you will need to resolve all recursive dependencies first. Luckily, there are tools that will do that for you, I prefer slpkg myself and have successfully installed FreeCAD on Slackware 15.0 some month ago with:

slpkg -s sbo FreeCAD

But as others have said, the appimage probably also works fine in 15.0.

regards Henrik

thanks for the suggestions.
over on FreeCAD thread someone recommended I run the appimage with a --write-log parameter.
Having done so I can report that

~/.local/share/FreeCAD/FreeCAD.log reads — in pertinent part — as follows:

Since I did not download the appimages as superuser slash sudo what is preventing access to Qt wayland?

I dislike most automation especially in deep level work so I never use anyuthing that would even attempt to resolve dependencies behind my back. Looking at the slackbuilds.org docs on FreeCAD I notice dependencies are needed to be resolved

"This requires: shiboken2, xerces-c, pyside2, Pivy, OpenCASCADE"

The way I use slackbuilds.org is to open those links for dependencies in new tabs and install each, working backwards till I get to the main bit, in this case, FreeCAD. I haven't checked to see if any of those dependencies have their own dependencies and while such layers can be a bit of a pita, it's pretty rare with Full Recommended Install and worth it to have a system that only does exactly what I want, no more, no less. Done this way the base system is never at risk. At worst the app won't launch or may launch with some non-functioning parts. In my view that is vastly preferable to messing with who-knows-what when 55 libraries and apps are automated to remove and reinstall because somebody else said it should work that way. In my view that can be a nightmare to troubleshoot when things go badly.

FWIW I only have a few appimage devices like BalenaEtcher but it and they run great as long as permissions are correctly set on a Full Recommended Install. For example, while BalenaEtcher will run as User, I tend to launch it with root privileges the same way that's wise for any such software like K3B.

Best wishes and welcome to Slackware LQN

EDIT: I just noticed you're using Wayland which I don't use yet for this exact reason. IMHO Wayland is likely the future but it's pretty beta in the present.

2 members found this post helpful.

My adventures in chmod were fruitless but when I read this I logged out of the wayland session and logged back in using X11: Success!

I am happy to report that the AppImage launched without issue.

I will now mark this and the FreeCAD forum thread as solved.

Is there some houskeeping / bug-reporting a concientious linux user should do?

1 members found this post helpful.

Thank you all for being generous with your attention!

Much appreciated,
symbolic Mark

You could report it to the FreeCAD development team, but it's quite possible that the AppImage isn't designed to work on Wayland.

The AppImage creator was complaining exactly about this! The development stuff should always be left for guinea pigs using Arch/Fedora it has no place in Slackware.