 Of the three containerized package formats that we talk about a lot, AppImages is for sure the third most popular. And it's a little bit disappointing because when it first came out, it had a lot of potential. And I've talked about this before and I've discussed why it really hasn't caught on the way Snaps and Flatpacks have. A lot of that has to do with the fact that it is more of a community project than any other package format is. Both Snaps and Flatpacks have corporate backing and that definitely plays a big role in it. But another is that it's really hard to install an app image out of the box without having another tool in order to do it. And that problem has persisted over the course of the last few years. And that's the reason why AppImages really haven't taken off. Now there have been attempts to kind of solve that problem. And that's what we're going to take a look at today. We're going to take a look at an application called App Image Pool. And when I first saw this application a few months ago and actually included it in one of my top five videos, it was an application with a lot of potential. But it wasn't really finished yet. And I came across it again recently and I thought I'd give it another look. And the thing is is that it has gotten better from when I featured it before. It is definitely more put together than it was. But it still is an application with a lot of potential that is left kind of dangling. It's not a application that is finished by any means. And it definitely could use some content curation in terms of actually things that are in the application. So let's start off with asking the question, what is App Image Pool? Well, it is an application that you can download that will allow you to have a front-end, gooey, store-like experience for App Images. So this would be something similar to like GNOME Software or the Snap Store or Discover, things like that. But it's for App Images. And the idea behind it is a really good one because one of the flaws of App Images is that they're not all in one place. It's an ecosystem that is reliant on the software developer pushing out an App Image and then hosting it themselves. That's usually the way App Images work. But with App Image Pool, they've tried to take all those App Images that live out there on the internet and kind of put them in one place. Well, not all, but a lot, right? And that is a really good idea because it solves one of the key problems that App Images have. They're not all in one place and they're hard to find. You kind of have to be searching out for a specific application in order to find them. This kind of eliminates that problem. The other idea behind App Image Pool is that it makes App Images easier to install. And when I say install, I mean actually install. And it is a good goal because as I've talked about before, using App Images is not the most user-friendly of things. You have to either use a tool to install them or know how to install them in some other way. Or your distro has to be capable of installing them for you when you click on them inside like a file manager or something. With App Image Pool, the idea is that you can at least go there and launch your applications. And it's still not as good as having it installed like an actual application, but it's still fairly OK. So let's actually take a look at App Image Pool. This is what it looks like out of the box. Well, almost out of the box. You'll get the light version. I turned it to the dark mode because light versions should go away, but other than that, this is what it looks like. And it is a fairly well-designed, fairly standard store experience. So you find an application. You click on it. It's going to have some screenshots and a description. Some of them have the license. Some of them have the author of the App Image. Some of them have the author of the application. So that's a little bit inconsistent. And what is on those pages is somewhat also inconsistent. So for example, if we go back here and see Blender, let's go ahead and see Blender here again. You will see that this has much more of a description. It does have the license. And it does have one of the authors of the App Image. This is one of the more full-featured pages that you'll find in the application. So that's definitely the first ding against this application. So like I said at the beginning, this is an application that has a lot of potential to be really good, but it has just a few things that kind of count against it. And you'll notice that as I go through, where I kind of point out the things that are just not quite there yet. Let's just go ahead and take a look at another application. This is Clementine. And as you can see here, not the greatest page in the world, right? No actual screenshots. The description is non-existent. This is actually the Clementine remote, but still. But the point is, is that it is here and there is a download button. So when you click download, one of the things that is interesting about this is that it gives you access to different versions of the application that you wanna download. So if you click on this little button here, you will see different versions of that application. And you can download any one of them that you want, which isn't really nice. If you know for a fact that the newest version doesn't run on your machine, but one of the older versions do, you can still download that application or that app image and still use it. My biggest problem here, and again, I'm being very critical of this, is that that arrow there is so small it might be easy to miss. So it's possible that you could get here, think that this is the only version that you have available to you and then just not see that you have other options. In order to download that, you would hit the checkbox and then download. And then what would happen, I'm gonna go ahead and download this. And then what would happen is if you went into your applications folder, which is in your home directory, you would then find that application right here. And here's where we come up with the biggest downside of this application. The outside of the things that are just aren't finished, the things that aren't curated very well, it doesn't actually install the application. So I can open up Rofi here and search for Clementine, even if I didn't know how to spell it, it's still not gonna come up, right? Cause it's not actually installed or at least it's not installed so a menu system can work on it. Now it's possible that if you're on like KDE or GNOME that it might show up, I'm not sure. It also might show up for me like after a reboot or something, but it's not actually showing up for me now. You can, however, if you go back to the homepage and click installed, you can see a list of all your installed app images here, and then you can click on one and it will launch that application. So while it's not as good as having it in your menu system, it is at least a little bit better, at least in my opinion, than having it just in your file manager or something. So just coming here and launching it is at least one way of doing it. Now, the entire idea behind this is that there is a collection or a pool of app images that you have access to. And there is a lot of software here and they've done a fairly good job, especially since the last time I used this of making sure that at least most of the applications have an icon, most of the applications are actually available. So you'll see most of the applications have download buttons. And while they are definitely still lacking in some descriptions and some screenshots, as you can see, most of them at least do have something. Before when I used it, a lot of them had nothing at all. A lot of them had no description and a lot of them had no download button, meaning that they had no app images associated with them. So that's a lot better. Now, that doesn't mean that problem has gone away completely. So if we go to the games here and I click on this one here, you'll see that this one actually has some screenshots and a description, but it doesn't have a download button. So you're gonna come across that sometimes in this application. And this is the really mind-boggling part for me is that I don't understand why it's still in the catalog if there's no download button, meaning that there's no app image there for you to actually download. Why is this in the catalog? It makes no sense to me. But like I said, it's way better now than it was before. It is definitely improving over time. So if you are someone who really likes app images, it's a good idea to maybe get involved in this project and maybe help them out if they need some help curating this kind of thing. Because there are some things that are just kind of missing. So you'll see some things here that just don't have icons. You'll see some things that have like really small icons or maybe they're blurry or something. So they haven't done a perfect job. It's still way better than it used to be. And it's not a great experience because like you would think that if it doesn't have an icon, it won't have a download button, right? Well, this one here is a download button. You could download it, right? It has no screenshots, we're not at least no real screenshots, some of them do have screenshots, but no icon, right? So it's a little, like I said, it's a little hit or miss in terms of how the application actually handles it. So honestly, after using this a few months ago, I have to say that I am impressed with the progress that they have made because it still is a good application that has a wide selection of applications that you can download via app image and use just like you would normally would any other app image. And that is a good thing because like I said, the biggest problem you have with app images is the finding them, right? A lot of times you don't know that they exist or you have to go to a specific software vendor and there's no way just to browse through software that happens to come in app images. Now there is, there's this and there's an app image hub that's a website which I haven't taken a look at, but this one here is a native application that you can then actually download stuff to your computer through that just like you would a GUI store. Now, like I said at the beginning, it's an application filled with potential. And I think that if they can kind of push it that extra 10% where you don't have those missing icons, you don't have the applications that are kind of there for no reason because they don't have a download button. If they can get rid of that problem, it's actually a really good application even if it still doesn't solve the problem of actually installing the application. So that is app image pool, just a brief look at it. It's actually like I said, a really good application. If you are involved in the app image ecosystem, like you don't like snaps, you don't like flat packs maybe because they're owned by corporations, whatever the reason you don't like those things, app images is a good option for you. This is a nice application center where you can kind of manage the app images you have installed and find other app images to install. So give it a check out, you can find the link to this in the video description. Funnily enough, I installed it via flat pack. I just thought that was ironic. There is however an app image if you wanna download it that way. So you can do it that way if you want to. So if you have thoughts about app image pool, you can leave those in the comment section below, just below the like button. If you like this video, I really would appreciate hitting that like button because it really does help the channel. If you haven't subscribed yet, hit the subscribe button because I have a ton more content out there. All about Linux and applications and open source stuff like that. So if you haven't subscribed yet, hit the big red subscribe button. I really do appreciate that if you have or even if you haven't done it yet, go ahead and do it now. I really do appreciate it, thank you. You can follow me on Twitter at Linuxcast. You can follow me on Mastodon or Odyssey. Those links will be in the video description along with all of my other social media network stuff. 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