 App images are really starting to grow on me. App images have really become my preferred dystro agnostic packaging format. Although I love snaps and I love flat packs as well, app images have some really unique qualities about them that I think make them the best choice out of all the containerized dystro agnostic formats that are being pushed out there. The more I play with app images, the more I realize how much easier they are to use than snaps and especially flat packs. And I think that's the one thing that we need to start focusing on. If we're trying to get as much software in the hands of as many people as possible, ease of use is something to think about. And app images are absolutely dead simple to use if you have the right tools installed alongside app images. And that's what we're gonna talk about today is I'm gonna show you a website you need to know about and I'm gonna show you a few apps that you probably should have installed on your system if you plan on using a lot of app images. The first thing I think everybody needs to know about is this particular website here, App Image Hub, appimghub.com. It currently has a catalog of 811 app images and counting and it explains to you what app images are, they're self-contained applications that can be simply downloaded. All you have to do is download the app image and it's ready to run. All you need to do is make it executable and it will run on any Linux distribution according to the webpage. Now that's actually not entirely true. There are some GNU slash Linux distributions, app images will not run on, but they're really specialty kind of distributions that really don't look and feel like your typical GNU slash Linux distribution. So I know for a fact, GNU Geeks has a problem running snaps and app images. I think it also has a problem with flatbacks as well, but GNU Geeks is a really weird distribution that has a strange directory structure and it causes some issues for these kinds of package formats. But one of the reasons I think snaps gained early adoption as far as fast early adoption was the fact that snaps, they had the central snapcraft.io store the one store where all the snap packages are and you could just go and browse all the snap packages. That's something that Flatpak didn't have. That's something that app image didn't have since then. Flatpak has created flat hub and now app image also has the app image hub as well. So they're not necessarily central repositories where you can go find all the flat packs and all the app images, but at least they have this one site anyway where they're trying to collect as many app images as possible to give people a central location where they can go get all their software. So I wanna show you some really neat applications that will help you organize and maintain your app images. So let me switch over to the desktop here. I'm gonna open up a graphical file manager. Let me open up PCman FM. And in my home directory, I have applications. If you do not have an applications folder, create one with a capital A because this is kind of where many app image tools expect you to have your app images. They expect you to have this applications folder in your home directory and that is where all of your app images, so all the files that end in dot app image should go in this directory. And the reason for that is I'm gonna install some really neat packages here. The first thing I wanna install is a program called the app image launcher. So if I get back into the browser here and the app image launcher, the code is hosted over on GitHub, this is just a very simple program. There's really not much to it, but it really does help, especially those of you that use traditional desktop environments and traditional menu systems. What the app image launcher will do is when you click on an app image and run it through the app image launcher, it creates a dot desktop file. What is a dot desktop file? Well, that's the file that places that program in your menu system. So your start menu and things like GNOME and Cinnamon and KDE, you go through a menu system and you have all your applications listed. Well, the reason that menu knows they're there is because there's these dot desktop files on your Linux system for all of your applications. App images, of course, don't create one just by you downloading it. You have to create them yourself while the app image launcher will create those for you. Oddly enough, the app image launcher, I could not find an app image to install it, but it is in most Linux distributions. On Arch, it is in the AUR, just do a yay dash capital S app image launcher. And that's exactly what I did. And if I get back over to the desktop and if I go to the applications folder here and I just right click on one of these, how about Belina Etcher? That is the USB writer. Instead of just double clicking and running it, well, first of all, let's assume I downloaded this and I haven't run it yet. The first thing you need to do is make sure it is executable. So go under permissions and make sure execute that the owner has permission to execute because by default, nobody will have permission to execute. And that means the program won't run. Nobody's allowed to run it. Well, make sure that you, the owner at least are allowed to run that program. And now I could double click it and it would run. But I don't want you to double click it. I want you to right click it and I want you to run it through the app image launcher. Now it's still going to launch and run. So etcher pops up. So what exactly was the point of running it through the app image launcher? Well, the point was that, well, let me close Belina Etcher. The point was it now created that dot desktop file for us. So it should be in our menu system. And I'm in the awesome window manager today. Awesome does have a menu system. If I right click on the desktop, here's the menu system. If I go down to accessories, let's see. Now, all of these are going to have dot desktop files and Belina Etcher did not before. I ran it through the app image launcher, but now it does. You see Belina Etcher is now listed under the accessories category. I actually had to think about that for a second. I never used that menu system in awesome window manager. I sometimes forget it's even there. So at the very least, I would launch all of your app images at least one time through the app image launcher just to create those dot desktop files. If you need these programs in a menu system, you can actually set it up to where it launches all your app images through the app image launcher every time because what's the harm in that? The next really cool program you guys should check out is one called the app outlet. And let me find it here in the app image hub. Here it is. It is listed under utilities and the app outlet is a graphical app store similar to like the GNOME Software Center or Muon and Discover and you know, things like that. But the difference with this application is that this app store is specifically for app images, flat packs and snap packs. So your GNOME slash Linux distribution, of course it's going to have a package manager, a command line package manager. It may have a graphical front end to that package manager but typically they don't list things like snaps, flat packs and app images in their official package manager. So this third party app store here gives you access to all of those other packaging formats. So if I go back to my applications folder here, you can see that I've already downloaded the app outlet app image. Let me right click. I'm gonna go ahead and run it through the app image launcher to make sure we get that desktop file created. Let's see if I can make this floating here in awesome window manager so you guys can see the application. So it's really pretty simple as far as the format. You've got a search bar, you've got some categories that you could search through. And of course on the homepage, you got the popular apps, including things like Belina Etcher and new releases. You could scroll through this kind of stuff. If you knew exactly what you were searching for, you could just do a search. And it does tell you, hey, this is a snap. This is a flat pack, right? So it gives you the package format before you install it. Pretty neat application. I think that makes a lot of sense for those of you that use app images or even snaps and flat packs. And me, I use all three packaging formats. I'm surprised I did not know about this application before because I think that the app app that is probably one that not many people are aware of and probably most desktop Linux users need to know about this particular software center. The next application I wanna talk about is one called the app image installer. Now this is a command line tool because I don't really need a graphical software center. I typically don't use them. They're kinda slow, they kinda slow you down too. If you know exactly what it is you wanna install, well, this solves that problem. Go ahead and install the app image installer. And you can find that over at the app image hub. So what this does is once it's installed and you can execute it, they pull up a terminal here and you run the app image installer simply by running the command app APP. App install and then whatever the name of the program you wanna install actually, it pulls it down from a URL. And the URLs can come from app image hub. They can come from GitHub. If it's an app image on GitHub, you just give it the URL. Let me find something to install just for practice here. So this is a terminal application, the app image installer. Let me go to that category and find maybe another terminal application. Edex UI, I actually did a video about that particular terminal emulator. It's an electron terminal emulator. Then it's got fancy push buttons and it looks like something out of Hollywood and it's actually a pretty amazing program. I haven't checked it out in a long time. So let me install that. So I'll paste that URL there. So apt install the URL, hit enter and you shouldn't have to do anything as far as root passwords or anything because we're not actually installing anything on the system. It's just downloading an app image and you don't need elevated privileges just to download something. Now the URLs that the app command line interface uses, it uses any URL that uses OCS. That's the open collaboration services protocol. And it's not going to work unless you also have a package on your system installed called OCS dash URL, I believe. Let me check that out. I know in ARCH it is in the AUR. Actually, is it in the AUR? Is it in the standard ARCH repositories? No, it is in the AUR OCS dash URL. It's the package you need. That gives you the protocol you need to be able to pull these packages down from app image hub and GitHub and anything else that uses the OCS format. And the installation has completed. You can see it looks like it did it create a dot desktop file for us? No, but it did place some icons on the system for us. I guess for edex UI. So if I right click, and let me just see if I can find edex in my menu system here without actually having to run it through the app image launcher. I do not see edex UI here under system tools which was probably where it would be. I didn't see it under accessories. Also didn't see it under development. So I probably do need to run this through the app image launcher. So I'm going to go back to my file manager here. And there is edex UI. It actually placed it in the applications folder. Typically when you download something from the internet, it always goes to a downloads folder. But the app command line installer knows it's an app image. It needs to be placed in this applications directory. Let's run it through the app image launcher. This is an electronic app. So it may take a minute to launch. It is kind of a neat application though if it actually does launch. Did I not make it executable though? I may not have. Let me go to permissions. Now it looks like it's already set to be executable. Probably the app installer took care of that for us. This is edex UI. It's finally loading up. It is a Hollywood inspired touchscreen terminal. If I had a touchscreen monitor, I don't and I actually don't want to do anything with this. I'm already getting some kind of panic new versions available. I guess this is an older app image of edex UI. Anyway, pretty neat program. Let me close that. But anyway, this was just a very quick video to share with you guys a little bit of some of the neat tools I found when playing with app images. And I hope you guys, if you're not checking out some of the really cool app images out there because one of the things about app image is it's kind of built by the community. It's a community format. There's no billion dollar corporation behind it, right? The way Red Hat is behind Flatback. The way Canonical is behind Snaps. And they're really pushing those particular formats. App image is more of the community format. Now before I go, I need to thank a few special people. I need to thank the producers of the show. I need to thank Michael, Gabe, Corbinion, Mitchell, Devin, Fran, Arch 5530, Akami, Chuck, Claudio, Donnie, Dylan, George Gregory, Kellogg Devils, Lewis, Paul, Scott, and Willie, these guys. They're the highest tiered patrons over on Patreon. And they are the producers of this episode about all of these amazing app image utilities. I also need to thank each and every one of these ladies and gentlemen as well. All these names you see on the screen right now, these are all my supporters over on Patreon because this channel is supported by you guys, the community. If you'd like to support my work, look for DistroTube over on Patreon. All right guys, peace.