Using AppImages is just very cool

I recently started paying attention to the trend of having Linux applications packaged as a single file. The idea is so simple, distribute the Linux app as a single packaged file which runs everywhere. It is self contained and has all its dependencies within itself. Call it snaps or flatpacks or app images, all of it refers to the same thing.

Of the above names, I found AppImages to be the most user friendly approach. All you need to do is download the file, make it executable and just run it! No installation required.

chmod a+x Sample.AppImage
./Sample.AppImage

On the home page https://appimage.org/ there is a testimonial by none other than Linus Torvalds who says “This is just very cool.” Pardon me if I used that verbatim as a title for this post. But such a comment coming from Linus himself talks volumes of how simple and intuitive this idea is.

There are several resources available online which list appimages for various applications and the files are available for download. You can simply download them in one location and get on with your work without any hassles of intsallation, missing dependencies, version upgrades etc.

For better integration with application menu, it would help to add a .desktop file to ~/.local/share/applications. Here is a sample desktop file for the Etcher appimage I am using on my machine.

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Etcher
Comment=Etcher Appimage
Exec=/home/user/Apps/Etcher.AppImage
Icon=/home/user/Apps/Etcher-icon.png
Terminal=false

This allows easy option to launch the application rather than running the app image from command prompt.

Etcher integration with Gnome

So far I have downloaded following app images and using them on regular basis.

1. Etcher – App to flash OS images to usb drives
2. Krita – Open source painting program
3. SimpleNote – Easy note taking application supporting markdown and having sync ability with Android
4. OnlyOffice – Free alternative to LibreOffice

AppImages is definitely a new way to run apps on linux. Since each app file contains its dependencies, it does not need to rely on installed libraries and runs flawlessly. Upgrades are also painless and nothing else breaks on the system. Need to uninstall an app, just delete its AppImage. I am beginning to like this approach and plan to use app images more often now. To quote Linus again “This is just very cool”.

Hosting your own audio podcast

Recently a friend of mine was working on an audio adaptation of a novel as a hobby. His style of narration made for a compelling listen and I was curious on what twist in the story the next installment would bring. Though his work was still in progress, he anticipated some 25 odd episodes by the end of the project. He would send me episodes of the recording over whatsapp and while I enjoyed them as they came along, the thought of preserving these as a playlist on some audio streaming service was definitely on his mind.

When looking around for options to be able to host and stream the audio preferably for free, I came across a post which suggested hosting audio files on dropbox and streaming from there. This was interesting. If hosting was taken care then streaming of the episodes could be easily done by embedding the files in HTML pages. These could be simple blog posts either on blogger.com or wordpress.com

The way this works is pretty straight forward.

1. Use your free dropbox account to host the file. Simply create a new folder and upload the files there.

2. Share these files by creating a link to individual files. Copy these links for future use.

3. To get the direct link to the file, replace dropbox.com in the url with dl.dropboxusercontent.com. You can then use this URL to embed on your website, and the audio will stream straight from Dropbox.

4. Now that the audio streaming is setup, you can work on the blog post. Give some background on the project, episode synopsis etc and then embed the audio url for each episode.

5. Publish the blog post and your audio podcast is done.

As a sample I am hosting my friend’s first episode and embedding its audio here.

This way you can choose to publish your audio files without hosting it onto any services which may require a monthly or yearly fee. Its that simple.

Caveat : As dropbox basic user, one can only stream the first 15 minutes of the hosted audio file. Consider upgrading to other plans to have increased streaming time.

Another way to overcome this would be to upload and host the audio file on wordpress itself. This will eliminate the need to have the dropbox account altogether, but the contents is now tied to wordpress and cant be used to stream on blogs hosted outside it. So one can choose his poison carefully.

For content with stream time less than 15 minutes the steps on this blog will work flawlessly and have flexibility to choose the blogging platform.