AppImages don't work on Ubuntu 26.04

[alexb3d]

None of them worked, so I installed Fuse and JRommanager worked. These ones don't, and I haven't tried any others yet.
I understand that I'm missing libjack.so.0 and libOpenGL.so.0.

My question is, is this going to be the case forever? Is there a way to install these dependencies, or for them to install automatically?

lex@home:~$ '/home/lex/.apps/games/RetroArch-Nightly/RetroArch-Linux-x86_64/RetroArch-Linux-x86_64.AppImage' 
Setting $HOME to /home/lex/.apps/games/RetroArch-Nightly/RetroArch-Linux-x86_64/RetroArch-Linux-x86_64.AppImage.home
/tmp/.mount_RetroAFCmjmb/AppRun.wrapped: error while loading shared libraries: libjack.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

lex@home:~$ '/home/lex/.apps/games/pcsx2/pcsx2-v2.6.3-linux-appimage-x64-Qt.AppImage' 
Setting $HOME to /home/lex/.apps/games/pcsx2/pcsx2-v2.6.3-linux-appimage-x64-Qt.AppImage.home
/home/lex/.apps/games/pcsx2/pcsx2-v2.6.3-linux-appimage-x64-Qt.AppImage: error while loading shared libraries: libOpenGL.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

lex@home:~$ '/home/lex/.apps/on-line/qBittorrent.AppImage' 
/tmp/.mount_qBittocoBMge/AppRun.wrapped: error while loading shared libraries: libOpenGL.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

[TheAssassin]

That's more of an issue of your system. You need to install libjack and a graphics driver (e.g., mesa).

[alexb3d]

Mesa is installed by default. My GPU is an AMD, with the Caicos driver. I haven't installed mesa-utils, although I'm not sure if it will work—I had already installed the dependencies.

You need to install certain dependencies to run (at least) these AppImages; I haven't tried it with design software yet.
sudo apt install libfuse2 libopengl0 libjack0

My question is, will I have to do this for every app?
Isn't there a way to automate this?

[TheAssassin]

Not needed for every app, but for these specifically, yes. libfuse2 is still a dependency of most older AppImages, newer ones should ship with a runtime that no longer needs it. The other libs are required by the apps in the AppImages.

[MichaelTunnell]

@alexb3d no, you will not need to do this for every AppImage. The problem is AppImage is based on FUSE2 and the ecosystem has moved onto FUSE3 but AppImage is still on the old version so every AppImage needs FUSE2 to be installed. Most distros are getting rid of FUSE2 because it is no longer maintained by anyone. I don't know why AppImages still depend on it after years of this. OMG Ubuntu wrote an article about this a few years ago if you want to learn more. https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/04/appimages-libfuse2-ubuntu-23-04

[TheAssassin]

Please be careful about spreading misinformation. Newer AppImage tooling has shipped for years with a statically linked runtime which does no longer need a libfuse2/3 to be installed on the host (FUSE is still a dependency in general, though). That article is very outdated.

[alexb3d]

So, I understand that RetroArch was built using a very old AppImage tool. Is that why it requires fuse2 and libopengl0?

[alexb3d]

So, I understand that RetroArch was built using a very old AppImage tool. Is that why it requires fuse2 and libopengl0?

Obviously, this is a silly question.
I'm going to report all the broken AppImages so they can be updated.

[rykel]

I have a fresh installation of Ubuntu 26.04. FUSE2 (ie. fuse, fuse2, libfuse2t64 etc.) are non-existent on this version. Therefore, there is no way to run many AppImages on Ubuntu 26.04 out of the box. Is there a solution for the end users to run Fuse2-dependent AppImages somehow?

An AppImage is supposed to be distro-agnostic but when it fails to run on one of the top 10 distributions out of the box, users may think otherwise, in my humble opinion.

I used to evangelise for Autopackage, by the way, so my interest in standalone apps goes a long way back. :)

[probonopd]

AppImages made with current tooling don't require libfuse2 (nor any version of libfuse) to be installed on the system.
If you are running in recent applications that still require libfuse2, please let the author of the respective AppImage know that they should be update their tooling.

If you have a historic collection of existing AppImages that you would like to convert, you can extract each one (using --appimage-extract) and then repacking the resulting AppDir (squashfs-root) using appimagetool.

[TheAssassin]

I might invest some time into a tool that does this automatically. It may not provide signing, but that's probably an acceptable trade-off.

[rykel]

Actually, if we can create one-click websites which allows any user to create his/her own AppImage of any tarball, DEB or RPM, that would be interesting, I think!

[odioski]

Dockers look cool for keeping your systems tidy. Better than compiling appimagetool for every distro you're planning for deployment. You might do that anyway but at least your system doesn't get destroyed.

[alexb3d]

Searching for information about AppImage online is one of the most frustrating experiences I've had with Linux. There are hundreds of everything. Even simple tasks like installing/integrate and updating are a real challenge. Not to mention creating an AppImage.

Could Anylinux-AppImages be a solution? It claims to require no dependencies and to update automatically.

I think that if AppImage wants to become an alternative for installing programs on Linux, it should be able to integrate with the desktop and update itself, because that has been one of its most important features. And obviously, it's in the software center.