Greets, everybody . . .
I've got a book coming on, and one of the rituals attendant to that is searching for an outliner/organizational application into which I can dump notes and such by chapter and conduct some of the other housekeeping involved. So I've gone through the bespoke applications that supposedly perform these functions and have learned that as with the last book a couple of years ago they all suck. I don't think that anyone involved with any of them has ever written anything for publication -- they've certainly not written anything resembling instructions for use of their applications.
One of these applications, a thing called "Joplin," is an appimage. I'd encountered one of these before; Geeqie releases some versions in that form, which I tried. I like Geeqie, but I don't much like appimages, though I'm not sure I can tell you why. So I thought I'd ask here what people think of appimages, both the idea of them and the way they're made and used in practice, in case there's a difference.
My vague distaste for them runs counter to reservations I had when moving to Linux from OS/2 and similar DOS-centric operating systems. My complaint then was that with DOS, Windows (at the time a DOS desktop) and OS/2 put a particular application's files all in one directory, Word in \word, Lotus in \lotus, and so on, so banishing an application involved nuking a directory and that was that. (I still think that more things ought to be in their own directories under /opt, and am glad that TDE does this; that prejudice came about when we were building KDE from source a time or two a week and having the whole thing blow up was not unheard of; deleting the failed build and renaming the existing, working version reduced the risk.)
Sorry for the digression. Having not given appimages a lot of thought but seeing that they're becoming more common, just thought I'd ask if there are any strong reasons for or against them.
Are appimages a good idea for anything beyond test-drive purposes? -- dep
Pictures: http://www.ipernity.com/doc/depscribe/album Column: https://ofb.biz/author/dep/
On Monday 25 October 2021 17.07:27 dep wrote:
Greets, everybody . . .
So I thought I'd ask here what people think of appimages, both the idea of them and the way they're made and used in practice, in case there's a difference.
I can't say that I "like" appimages, but they do solve some dependancy hell problems.
At my school, we used a software named "Uniboard" (electronic whiteboard). It was then dropped by the university of Lausanne that made it, taken over by French (renamed something I've forgotten), dropped again, forked by the University of of Geveva (Switzerland) and renamed OpenBoard.
They provide Ubuntu packages that don't run on Debian (I'm not sure how they run on Ubuntu). I found however an Appimage and that one does run, because the appimages contain all thr dependancies. That may take more place but I don't have to try and pollute my machine with packages that, in the end, don't help (when they still exist for Debian).
So I find the idea (rather like a Mac app) quite good.
It does require installing stuff I use rarely, and I have not investigated exactly what the appimage package consists of. I've trusted Debian...
Some KDE programs like kdenlive exist as appimages. I don't know how far they would prevent parts of KDE to need being installed though.
Another such idea is snap. I've had less success with snaps.
Thierry
said Thierry de Coulon: | On Monday 25 October 2021 17.07:27 dep wrote: | > Greets, everybody . . . | > | > So I thought I'd ask here what | > people think of appimages, both the idea of them and the way they're | > made and used in practice, in case there's a difference. | | I can't say that I "like" appimages, but they do solve some dependancy | hell problems. | | At my school, we used a software named "Uniboard" (electronic | whiteboard). It was then dropped by the university of Lausanne that made | it, taken over by French (renamed something I've forgotten), dropped | again, forked by the University of of Geveva (Switzerland) and renamed | OpenBoard. | | They provide Ubuntu packages that don't run on Debian (I'm not sure how | they run on Ubuntu). I found however an Appimage and that one does run, | because the appimages contain all thr dependancies. That may take more | place but I don't have to try and pollute my machine with packages that, | in the end, don't help (when they still exist for Debian). | | So I find the idea (rather like a Mac app) quite good. | | It does require installing stuff I use rarely, and I have not | investigated exactly what the appimage package consists of. I've trusted | Debian...
That all makes sense. The one complaint I've had is that they don't well document things such as where they put configuration files and the like, which is annoying -- I often try out a program, learn that it isn't what I need, and delete it. Then months or years later I find some orphan configuration file and have no idea what it is for and whether I can be safely rid of it. During my extremely brief test of "Joplin," I sought to learn how to uninstall it. After a little online searching I found the answer, but it came along with an angry comment from the developer.
That's one overarching benefit with .deb files (and maybe .rpm by now -- I haven't used RPMs much this millennium): it's possible to utterly delete an application fairly painlessly.
If the menu police would like to do something that's actually useful, they could formulate a standard that specifies that every application include uninstall/purge instructions. Then enforce it as vigorously as they do the weird menu standard.
| Some KDE programs like kdenlive exist as appimages. I don't know how far | they would prevent parts of KDE to need being installed though.
That was a question I had. There have been various ways to run what amount to non-native programs by including the dependencies but, yes, how far does it go? Might one, for instance, put together an appimage to run a now-deprecated i386 program? Or a DOS app? Where does the appimage become a virtual machine? (I'm sure there's a formal answer to the last question, but I do not know what it is.)
To be (sort-of) on topic, in pursuit of my writing helper application it occurred to me that there might be a way to accomplish this with Basket Note Pads, on which I rely for other things and which I think is one of the best KDE/TDE applications ever, similar to the wonderful InfoSelect TSR that was around before most people on this list were born. From time to time I've made use of TDE and mainline KDE versions of the same application alongside each other -- I have both KDE and Trinity versions of DigiKam and GwenView installed and working here now, for instance -- but just now I tried to install the current KDE version of Basket (for KDE4) and while it seemed to install uneventfully, if there's a way to run it I can't find it. Making me wonder if there's an easy way to cook up an appimage for such cases one might need one.
| Another such idea is snap. I've had less success with snaps.
Are snaps much the same idea as appimages? There have been a lot of strange packaging systems -- snap and something called flatpak among them -- about which I know almost nothing, figuring that I'd wait to see if they become popular enough that they're likely to stick around. -- dep
Pictures: http://www.ipernity.com/doc/depscribe/album Column: https://ofb.biz/author/dep/
On Monday 25 October 2021 09:36:05 dep wrote:
| I can't say that I "like" appimages, but they do solve some dependancy | hell problems.
If you go to all the trouble of using protonmail, etc., then why would you not follow through and use something more secure, or less inscrutable, than appimages?
Whenever I'm told that I cannot look inside and inspect the source, but instead given vague promises that I can just blindly trust them not to do bad things nor to collect my data, it pretty much means that I'm gonna get screwed somehow.
| They provide Ubuntu packages that don't run on Debian (I'm not sure how | they run on Ubuntu).
Even though Debian and Devuan are nearly identical, and their packages are practically interchangeable most of the time, mixing and matching them can cause problems (especially if you don't like systemd).
Ubuntu is based on Debian, but packages are quite often not interchangeable. I have sometimes got one to run on the other, but Ubuntu tends to add stuff that disrespects their users in little ways, and sometimes do worse. Ubuntu has call-home triggers built into some of their packages. When I ran Ubuntu, I would watch network activity, and hardly an hour went by without dozens of outgoing traffic to Canonical.
| It does require installing stuff I use rarely, and I have not | investigated exactly what the appimage package consists of. I've trusted | Debian...
I still mostly trust Debian, but I like Devuan better for sticking to the original Debian principles.
Regarding your actual problem (which is how to organize research materials for a book), might I suggest some old-school tools and tricks? https://www.communizine.com/how-to-improve-your-life-using-3x5-notecards/ https://www.lifehack.org/articles/featured/index-card-hacks.html
:-]
Not that I actually use 3x5 cards in the same way; but the principle remains the same. I use plain text files for much the same purpose, or I scan graphics or collect other digital files. Then I organize materials into proto-chapters; but really they are just whatever seems to fit under a heading, lumped together as I collect them, slowly taking shape over years. I put my bibliographical information, notes or other references right there with the quoted passage. Then I dump the plain text into an office document.
Another thing about research: it's good to have hard copies of essential materials; but also to have digital copies of printed matter.
Bill
On Monday 25 October 2021 18.36:05 dep wrote:
| Some KDE programs like kdenlive exist as appimages. I don't know how far | they would prevent parts of KDE to need being installed though.
That was a question I had.
I happen to have a test install of Devuan Chimaera, as far as I remember without any special installs appart from TDE (I installed the last Beta, then upgraded to stable when it came out).
I have simply downloaded the kdenlve appimage, made it executable, started it: seems to work as intended. So it seems yes, this could be a way to run KDE apps, maybe also Gnome ones, without installing the backbone of these UIs.
| Another such idea is snap. I've had less success with snaps.
Snaps seem to have the advantage of being sandboxed, however installing, manipulating and deleting them is more complicated.
There is also Flatpack out there.
However, my basic needs are usually covered by the standard repositories, and for rare, special needs I find the simplicity of appimages good.
As to security, well, anyone heard of a security breach through appimages? I've got recent backups of my system and little on my harddisc that could be of any use to cyber-burglers.
Oh, and being alive is a permanent risk, so...
Thierry
On Monday 25 October 2021 12:06:15 Thierry de Coulon wrote:
As to security, well, anyone heard of a security breach through appimages?
Wait for it ...
Besides, it is the principle involved, that nobody can look inside. I would consider running something non-free or proprietary (even Windoze) inside a VM, however.
Oh, and being alive is a permanent risk, so...
Thierry
Someday we will all wear full-body condoms whenever we leave our individual residence bubbles. All communication will be online, in order to protect us from other people.
Bill
On 2021-10-25 10:07:27 dep wrote:
Greets, everybody . . .
I've got a book coming on, and one of the rituals attendant to that is searching for an outliner/organizational application into which I can dump notes and such by chapter and conduct some of the other housekeeping involved. So I've gone through the bespoke applications that supposedly perform these functions and have learned that as with the last book a couple of years ago they all suck. I don't think that anyone involved with any of them has ever written anything for publication -- they've certainly not written anything resembling instructions for use of their applications.
One of these applications, a thing called "Joplin," is an appimage. I'd encountered one of these before; Geeqie releases some versions in that form, which I tried. I like Geeqie, but I don't much like appimages, though I'm not sure I can tell you why. So I thought I'd ask here what people think of appimages, both the idea of them and the way they're made and used in practice, in case there's a difference.
My vague distaste for them runs counter to reservations I had when moving to Linux from OS/2 and similar DOS-centric operating systems. My complaint then was that with DOS, Windows (at the time a DOS desktop) and OS/2 put a particular application's files all in one directory, Word in \word, Lotus in \lotus, and so on, so banishing an application involved nuking a directory and that was that. (I still think that more things ought to be in their own directories under /opt, and am glad that TDE does this; that prejudice came about when we were building KDE from source a time or two a week and having the whole thing blow up was not unheard of; deleting the failed build and renaming the existing, working version reduced the risk.)
Sorry for the digression. Having not given appimages a lot of thought but seeing that they're becoming more common, just thought I'd ask if there are any strong reasons for or against them.
Are appimages a good idea for anything beyond test-drive purposes?
dep
What I don't like about these sorts of packages is that they assume that they will be used on a single-user machine, and if there is more than one user on the system the package has to be installed in each user's space; also, containing their own dependent libraries, etc., IMO they're bloatware. Then too, there's the security issues of having possibly back-level code imbedded in them.
Leslie -- Operating System: Linux Distribution: openSUSE Leap 15.3 x86_64 Desktop Environment: Trinity Qt: 3.5.0 TDE: R14.0.10 tde-config: 1.0
On Thursday 28 October 2021 00.29:48 J Leslie Turriff wrote:
What I don't like about these sorts of packages is that they assume that they will be used on a single-user machine, and if there is more than one user on the system the package has to be installed in each user's space;
Unless you "install" them where all can access.
also, containing their own dependent libraries, etc., IMO they're bloatware.
That is only true if you also have the dependancies installed elsewhere. In that case I agree with you. But we have talked of two cases where you are wrong:
- running a KDE application without installing KDE - running an application when you can't install the required dependancies
Besides, many have far more disk space than they need, so the "bloat" for a few programs seems not so big.
Then too, there's the security issues of having possibly back-level code imbedded in them.
The risk exists theoretically, but has never been proven, AFAIK. As far as I am concerned, the benefits are worth the risks for a few apps. Of course I'd install from repositories if I have the choice.
Thierry
On Mon, Oct 25, 2021 at 03:07:27PM +0000, dep wrote:
Greets, everybody . . .
I've got a book coming on, and one of the rituals attendant to that is searching for an outliner/organizational application into which I can dump notes and such by chapter and conduct some of the other housekeeping involved.
LibreOffice and/or OpenOffice?
Plain old text files, edited in the editor of your choice, organised in directories "chapter 1", "chapter 2", etc?
Writers who argue about bespoke applications for managing their writing are like programmers who argue about IDEs. All IDEs suck, and if you know your tools, you don't need one.
https://mkaz.blog/code/unix-is-my-ide/
https://blog.sanctum.geek.nz/series/unix-as-ide/
And yes, Unix tools as an IDE sucks too. It's an IDE, so by definition it sucks. Choose the suckage you prefer, and go for it.
http://wcaleb.org/blog/my-academic-book-in-plain-text
https://richardlent.github.io/post/the-plain-text-workflow/
https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2020/12/10/why-and-how-i-write-scientifi...
Relevant:
Three Dead Trolls In A Baggie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d85p7JZXNy8
said Steven D'Aprano: | On Mon, Oct 25, 2021 at 03:07:27PM +0000, dep wrote: | > Greets, everybody . . . | > | > I've got a book coming on, and one of the rituals attendant to that is | > searching for an outliner/organizational application into which I can | > dump notes and such by chapter and conduct some of the other | > housekeeping involved. | | LibreOffice and/or OpenOffice? | | Plain old text files, edited in the editor of your choice, organised in | directories "chapter 1", "chapter 2", etc? . . .
Yeah, thanks -- I actually wasn't seeking bookwriting advice so much as asking the list its views on the pros and cons of appimages as a general thing, in that there's considerable experience here.
As to book writing, I published this yesterday:
https://ofb.biz/safari/article/932.html -- dep
Pictures: http://www.ipernity.com/doc/depscribe/album Column: https://ofb.biz/author/dep/
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dep -
J Leslie Turriff -
Steven D'Aprano -
Thierry de Coulon -
William Morder