Since I went back to Ubuntu 2 years ago I am confused about AppImages and Flatpak.
I just wanted to download my usual programs but have to make uninformed choices about how to download them.
For example I think Firefox is a flatpak or an AppImage but it works normally, but Audacity and Musescore are AppImages and they don’t.
I want the following for Audacity and Musescore:
There should be a specific recognisable icon for the program, not just a grey cogwheel for each one. And I don’t understand why they aren’t listed with all the other Apps.
It should open when I click on it instead of having to right click and select “run as program” every time. And yes, I did rt click properties and checked “allow executing as program”
When I rt click on a file that was created for that program, I should at least see an option to open the file in that program, whereupon the program should run and open it when I click on that option.
But preferably when I click on such a file, the program should open and run it.
For example when I click on a document file it opens in LibreOffice writer.
But when I click on a sound file I can’t select to open it in Audacity. I have to open the Audacity AppImage first, then navigate from there to the file I want it to read.
Same with MuseScore
Is it possible to reinstall these programs in a different way?
Appimages are a way to distribute programs so that they run on all Linux distributions. They packages most of the files the program needs into one file. Since they are meant to run everywhere they sometimes fail to integrate properly with the rest of the system.
If the Firefox you’re using is the one that came with Ubuntu, than it’s not an Appimage but a snap package.
The easiest way to get the applications you want is not to download them as Appimages but to use the Ubuntu Software application. It should have both Musescore and Audacity available, but probably in somewhat older versions (3.6.2 for Musescore, 3.7.1 for Audacity).
It is possible to integrate the Appimages into the desktop, if you absolutely need the newer versions available that way. You would need to create a desktop file for each app and put it in one of the places where the system looks for these (/usr/share/applications/ or ~/.local/share/applications). Doing so will put the programs in the application overview. If you put the mime types you want the program to open in the desktop file, the program should be in the list of programs you see when you right-click on a file and select “open with” from the context menu.
Thanks
Yes, FF is a snap package, also have gimp and vlc as snap
Integrating into desktop sounds interesting but I will have to try that later, sounds like may need some time for someone my level.
Meantime, if I try downloading as Ubuntu software, how do I know which Audacity and Musescore files currently in the system need to be cleaned out and how do I find them?
That’s actually a good thing about appimages: the whole of the program is just that one file. You might have to clean out some configuration files if they contain options the the older versions don’t understand - might apply to Musescore more than to Audacity. Those should typically be in ~/.config. Be aware that the dot at the start of ‘.config’ means that your file manager will not show this directory by default. You’ll have to tell it to show hidden files.
THere is an audacity folder in /home/user, containing several files and subfolders, including a .cfg file, and also some in the snap store. Nearly all used in the last month, so not due to historic attempts to reinstall audacity.
I assume temp files are in the AppImage folder.
There actually is a system-wide dedicated folder for temporary files: ‘/tmp/’. A lot of programs erase their temporary files just after creating them (if a file is deleted while it’s still held open by some program, the name is removed but the blocks are not freed and the program can work with that file like normal; if the program closes the file or is itself shut down the blocks used by it are freed). So leftover temporary files are not really common.
Any data in ~/snap is used by programs installed as snaps for configuration data; snaps can not access hidden folders in a users home directory so their configuration is in subdirectories ~/snap instead of in a hidden folder of their own or in ~/.config.
There is a folder named ‘~/.cache/’ for cached data, there might be some leftover data there or in some obvious subfolder.