What are your thoughts on AppImage?

I ran across a AppImage for the first time today on the OpenShot download page. Interesting concept, but I have to wonder about security concerns. For example there is no way to verify the integrity of the download, such as a sha256sum file listed on their download page. Would you consider this more of a securit risk than the OpenShot PPA that’s available from the Software Boutique?

Relevant links:

http://openshot.org/download/

http://appimage.org/

There is a 27 minute video on the AppImage web site that explains what they are in detail.

I used AppImage once to package a script and I concluded for myself that AppImage was a lot easier to use as a packager without any experience than Snap or Flatpak.

However, as far as I know, in contrast to those two, AppImage do not run in a confined security environment.

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Hallo

As far as I know Appimage has been around for a while, and as far as I know it gets very little use. The reasons for that would be interesting (apart from the very large download files).

I’ve no experience with flatpack and snaps.

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Yes apparently it has.

Released first in 2004 under the name klik, it was continuously developed since then, renamed in 2011 to PortableLinuxApps and 2013 to AppImage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppImage

Reminds me very much of a OS X App package. Before the Appstore was implemented mostly, one would download a App package, drag it to the Applications folder, and it was ready to run. This procedure worked for most Apps, though some still required installation to operate. As with a AppImage, no root password was needed to use the App (unless installation was required).