AppImage seems to be a new great way to package a linux application for multiple distributions.
The advantage to users is with appimage, you can download a single file representing the program, make it executable and run it and it would just work. Even the required libraries are embedded so one doesn’t even have to worry about updating a certain library to run the program. The file size becomes large because AppImage packages the program files into an iso image which gets mounted when you run the application.
Would that be feasible and easy to do with Blender? I know it’s already easy to unzip and run the binary but this is one step easier.
If enough people get behind this I suspect windows and OSX will only last for as long as developers will be willing to write code for those systems.
On the blender side of things you can already download and run blender on linux without going through a package manager anyway so it probably won’t have much of an effect other than not having to unzip it after downloading it.
lol. only as long as developers will write code for 90% of their customers? and htey should geet a new name. a capitol I and lower case l look the same in many fonts. i read it to fast as apple mage and thought linus was getting into osx. and self contained/installing libraries is probably not a good idea, you know virus writers will jump on it. just because they’re evil people doesn’t mean they’re not smart.
Windows isn’t going anywhere so long as it’s the OS used on more than 90 percent of personal computers.
It would take an unimaginable series of blunders from Microsoft for Linux to even have a chance of becoming the dominant OS in the next 5 to 10 years (a heavily established product is, simply put, extremely hard to dislodge).
I mos def like it. Why should it be so damn hard to work with applications through different distros? Been waiting for an easy way to run/install apps on Linux since 98 so yeah bring it on. Building from source is not fun.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it took more than 30 years for linux to become the majority desktop OS, it took longer than that for desktop computers and mobile phones to become something that the majority of people owned since they first came into existance. The point I was trying to make was that this is another step towards linux becoming something an average user could be happy with. Since this takes away most of the difficulty away from actually getting a piece of software to an end-user and having it function as intended (like Windows and OSX have already been doing for the past 20 years) large software companies should now feel more comfortable distributing their software on a Linux based platform, which will hopefully result in more companies being willing to port their software to Linux.
isn’t that what packet managers are for? and aren’t they all deb or rpm? it cant be that hard and should be alot more secure. unzipping all you have to do is check sum. how will check sum help this new way? anything could be altered. “it just runs” is why antivirus is such a big market on windows. easier is not always better.
i remember when java 1st came out. “write once, run everywhere.” i wasn’t so nieve after i had to format my hdd losing everything on it. you cant blindly trust random programs. experience is the best teacher, unfortunately shes also the most expensive.
Hm interestingly dough their payroll is becomming les dependend of that kind of things.
Office 365 is the new cow in town to be milked.
And there are some exiting changes, Microsoft Code (runs on Aple and Linux), Visual studio 2015 now free and not limited for personal use, can compile to windows, Aple android, linux. Sure Microsoft does like you to buy Windows 10, but if not if you run office f365 remote using firefox on android. They’re fine with it, big company changes last years. And its not only 365, its their cloud as well, and their research area. As an extreme rich company they can behave in the market just like they want to, it doenst even matter that windows mobile phone isnt the next hype Android is fine too. They got other ares to earn the bucks from.
Btw Portable Aps, old idea lets you do things at 90% of all computers.
Actually it reduces the risk of getting a virus because at no point do you have to make use of root privileges to download and install the software. You also don’t have to worry about someone that manages a package including malicious software with it.
Eh… have you ever installed eg. Nuke on Linux? It is distro agnostic and click next, next, next, done. Stuff is installed in /usr/local (or /opt) with dynamically linked libs included. What is the problem? Games like Quake3 worked like this too, with the icculus installer. I think a group of people wants to make this a bigger deal than it is. This “new” thing sounds like how Apple soft is packaged and installed, which is fair enough, but not a “fix” to “broken Linux”. Package managers and repo’s are a special thing on Linux/*BSD that Windows/Mac don’t really acknowledge, and works fabulously if you understand the concept. If you don’t, it’s not a Linux problem, so don’t project misinformation unto Linux, please.
that’s true, but Blender’s development is fast-paced and i noticed many distributions don’t always have the latest build. Also, if major applications like Blender used appimage, it makes it known and appealing to use in other programs
It’s possible that Linux will become a secondary OS for some specific purposes, at least for power users I guess. Maybe in smaller companies Linux can become a viable option if Microsoft and Apple along with developers continue towards the subscription model. But that could also open possibility for entirely new OS to appear, possibly closed source like Windows.
Good that Linus is discovering “AppImage” at this time but I’m sure have read about this some years ago (even played with it).
Anyway I do not understand what is the problem here. If the developer/company/packager would want to do it, it is possible to offer binaries with static libraries without “AppImage”, as Blender or Natron do.
Not correct. There are two different/distinct family trees and even with-in those, there are further issues/incompatibilities. But, it really isn’t a major problem, and when it concerns Open Source Software running on GNU+Linux it’s barely an issue at all.
This is more of a concern for proprietary software because they wouldn’t be opening the projects up for community management.
even better since you don’t need to go through the installation process
there are some cases where a program cannot work on different distros, possibly because the distro arranges files differently or has outdated libraries, etc.
appimage, again, makes it easier to download and run a program, it packages the whole application in a single file so people don’t need to do extra steps to get the software to work
Check out Docker. It’s similar to this, but has no dependencies at all in the host OS except the kernel. It does complex multi-container applications, deals with storage, etc. It’s mainly geared towards server applications though.
Also, just an FYI. The actual system that most people refer to as Linux, is properly known as the GNU+Linux or the GNU+Linux added. Linux is the kernel, the rest of the OS all comes from the GNU. There are actually variants of the GNU that run with different kernels, aka, there is a BSD version, etc…
Why is this relevant here? Because the man who put together the rest of the system, aka the GNU, and the man responsible for the concept and licenses (aka GNU open source licenses that Blender uses) isn’t Linus Torvalds, it was Stallman. Richard Stallman is an odd character, eccentric, but he’s smart. The two people don’t like each other at all at. If I had to pick the one that I would trust, in terms of not having to worry about them trying to push through something that would not be beneficial to freedom/Open Source, then Stallman would be the one to trust. If you need a good reason why, read up on the Tivo debacle (there are a few back and forth open letters between Stallman and Torvolds on this issue, they are well worth reading and make up your own mind), it was a major attempted abuse of the GPL license specifically designed to circumvent the full usefulness of GPL software, and it ultimately lead to Stallman developing the GPL v3. See for yourself.
Wow, that does sound exciting! One of the first things i didn’t like when moving to Linux was the lack of portable programs. Not that there aren’t any, Blender is one, but it’s still somewhat uncommon.