Commercial linux packages that mysteriously just work?

turtles · Veteran Joined: 31 Dec 2004 Posts: 1698

Has anyone noticed these commercial Linux packages that just work?
Arduino IDE, and the software for the Saleae Logic analyzer
https://www.saleae.com
They both are similar in that they mount a FUSE filesystem in /tmp when they run.
I suspect they are both Java based but not sure, and they dont need any system Java if so.
I am actually curious what the dependencies and minimum system requirements are.
We'll regardless its nice that they just work.

EDIT: With 2 seconds more of digging these are both using 'Appimages'
https://docs.appimage.org/index.html
What a handy format
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Banana · Posted: Fri May 17, 2024 9:32 am Post subject:

https://ubunlog.com/en/appimage-the-good-and-the-bad-of-such-software-packages/

Invest some time to understand those techniques. There is good but also a lot of bad.
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turtles · Veteran Joined: 31 Dec 2004 Posts: 1698

Yeah not a replacement for emerge or normal system packages,
but in the case of 'taking work home' instead of lugging one of two work laptops home along with whatever piece of kit I am working on I can just run off my Gentoo setup.
The Appimage for the Saleae logic analyzer was extremely handy as I did not have to lug a work laptop home to run the logic analyzer software.
The arduino IDE I had also installed from portage, but I needed to test a particular version for work.
Interestingly when I tried to muck around with one of FUSE mount directories they created in /tmp I could not edit or delete a file as root, that was a first.
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Banana · Posted: Fri May 17, 2024 5:36 pm Post subject:

The portability of those packages is indeed one of the things I find positive.
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carcajou · Apprentice Joined: 10 Jun 2008 Posts: 249

Security (sandboxing) related, you may find this link helpful: https://firejail.wordpress.com/documentation-2/appimage-support/

turtles · Veteran Joined: 31 Dec 2004 Posts: 1698