Portable Linux Apps

[usdcs]

Has anyone else discovered PortableLinuxApps.org?

[carbonize]

Seems very strange because what are the odds of the machine you are working when away from home actually running Linux?

[m^(2)]

Depends. If you use it in regular places like home and school, you may have Linux in both.
And there are places where Linux is popular, i.e. among my friends there are probably more Linux than Windows users. Though it's not a representative group, these are machines I'm likely to be using at some point.
Besides, portability has benefits other than carrying stuff in your pocket. Like easy OS migration. I have almost all my tools portable, though I don't carry them for many years already.

[webfork]

Has anyone else discovered PortableLinuxApps.org?

I thought this had been posted at some point ... but I guess not. Thanks usdcs.

As with Windows portable apps, there are other advantages besides portability:

• These apps have the advantage of avoiding a lot of annoying dependencies issues that sometimes come up in Linux. These have mostly been ironed out over the past 10 years, but they can still find you.
• If you have a really stripped-down copy of Linux, (such as Lubuntu) apps with all the libraries built into them will have no trouble running.

Negatively:

• The apps have a much larger system footprint than if they're run natively
• When many apps are running, you may end up running multiple copies of the same library. Its not a big deal on modern systems, but can take up quite a bit of RAM.

(This is according to a sysadmin friend of mine -- I haven't actually tested this. Its possible that Linux might automatically see identical libraries and adjust accordingly, I don't know.)

Seems very strange because what are the odds of the machine you are working when away from home actually running Linux?

I've run into a few. On very old hardware, its really the only way to go because old versions of MS are just too vulnerable and XP is too slow. Additionally -- unlike Windows -- you don't need a hard drive.

[carbonize]

But unlike Windows you have no guarantee these apps will work with whatever desktop Linux is running. I mean will these run under Unity?

[webfork]

But unlike Windows you have no guarantee these apps will work with whatever desktop Linux is running. I mean will these run under Unity?

The site says they've been tested on three of the big distros, including Ubuntu.

[carbonize]

Yes but that was Ubuntu running Gnome. Ubuntu 11 uses Unity be default although you can switch to Gnome.

[usdcs]

So far, I've successfully run Calibre and Dropbox on Puppy Linux v5.2.5, which is running from the Live CD...

The apps are stored on a FAT 32 partition on the local drive.

[webfork]

Old thread update:

The apps have a much larger system footprint than if they're run natively

This still seems far away for most users, but was an interesting development:

I talked to one of the developers of PC-BSD and found out they've developed a system to avoid overlap: The operating system dynamically integrated de-duplication into the OS. I think this is a feature of the awesome ZFS file system that's finally making it down to the desktop level.

The example that was used was two Mozilla programs: Firefox and Thunderbird share a lot of similar files. So when one of the shared files (say an update in Mozilla), it will create a separate (new) file. Then, once Thunderbird catches up, it will go back to sharing a single file.

If this could make it down to the USB drive level and become a standard across Linux devices, that would be a phenomenal space saver and increase drive life by reducing data writes.

This grabbed me because it reminded me of the DLL Project I attempted 2 years ago to create a shared library folder.

[m^(2)]

Old thread update:

The apps have a much larger system footprint than if they're run natively

This still seems far away for most users, but was an interesting development:

I talked to one of the developers of PC-BSD and found out they've developed a system to avoid overlap: The operating system dynamically integrated de-duplication into the OS. I think this is a feature of the awesome ZFS file system that's finally making it down to the desktop level.

Nope, it's on the package manager level, so it's filesystem-independent.
http://www.pcbsd.org/~kris/pbi9-slides.pdf

BTW it's nice that you interested in PC-BSD.

[Midas]

Really happy to see this. It makes a lot of sense, although BSD if way out of the reach of my meager *nix skills...

[m^(2)]

Did you try PC-BSD? It's way easier than FreeBSD itself, about the level of consumer-oriented Linuces.

[webfork]

Nope, it's on the package manager level, so it's filesystem-independent.

Ah -- good news, thanks.

BTW it's nice that you interested in PC-BSD.

Heh -- the dev that I talked to is really responsible for that.

Really happy to see this. It makes a lot of sense, although BSD if way out of the reach of my meager *nix skills...

Did you try PC-BSD? It's way easier than FreeBSD itself, about the level of consumer-oriented Linuces.

Yeah they are trying really hard to push into the desktop space and make it easier. They're removing package dependency issues that have long plagued *Nix systems and introducing a app store that most definitely rivals any available in terms of speed and efficiency, only downloading what files you need between releases. If they can keep making things simple and easy while doing it better on the back end like that, you'll definitely be seeing some converts.

[Midas]

I must confess my limited experience with any BSD -- I mostly fiddled around with a FreeNAS installation a while back and had a lot of filesystem trouble (JFS, if memory serves me right)...

My appraisal is more of the cost/benefit genre: having not been successful to get a comfortable linux setup yet (Linux Mint Debian Edition {stats @ http://community.linuxmint.com/} and Peppermint OS are my closest runners up, the latter is a breeze to run from USB and has extricated me from hardship more than once) I'm reluctant to dwell into an even less standard *nix flavor.

[m^(2)]

Yeah, fine. I don't have any experience with FreeNAS yet (I want to have a closer look one day, but lack time), but plain FreeBSD is much more painful than PC-BSD and if sb.'s willing to take a look, I can totally recommend it.