Portable desktop/applications for Linux. We have some wintools but with issues
Many people I know are constant users of the portableapps suite. As it makes life easier in several ways. http://portableapps.com/ Is the tool in question. Has anyone on list ever used the portableapps suite at all-and if so did you get it to work in a Linux environment? Or do you know of a Linux tool of similar functionality? I had thought of using a USB HD resident distro in QEMU mode, began research on "how-to's" and found issues mitigating the full urility.Such as - QEMU mode distros to my research depend on unfree code in a windows environment at present. Is my understanding correct? And public kiosk mode sites like the Kc Library might not let me load QEMU at all. So it went back to portableapps. As It just works on most windows boxes . And does so tracelessly upon unmount. *NOT* for bad things like abuses,, but for good ones such as not risking data leaks. The initial searching I did found : http://www.linuxfortravelers.com/running-portable-apps-on-linux Which is a very nice Yes, it can be done. The looking further to get a "how-to" found me another angle on the concept/s: http://openlina.com/ If any KCLUG folks as want to- test these and comment. Even if it's only a roll call of if we tried and thought it was.... reports. THAT would be all of us using and commenting on real Linux uses. And attempting to draw in related projects from the not fully free world so thy might become more free and open. I have a thought on interlacing some of this that depends on cross platform coding. I am unsure of the best choices to make it simple. Check out the sites I listed- they might be of interest. -- Oren Beck 816.729.3645
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Oren Beck wrote: | Many people I know are constant users of the portableapps suite. As it | makes life easier in several ways. | | http://portableapps.com/ | | Is the tool in question. | | Has anyone on list ever used the portableapps suite at all-and if so | did you get it to work in a Linux environment? My boss runs portable Thunderbird for his mail. He recently got an Asus EeePC, which he wanted to use with the portable apps USB key. I don't know if it's what you're after, and it might be 'cheating', but I just setup a profile on Thunderbird (already installed on the Eee) that referenced the profile directory on the portable apps key. - -- Charles Steinkuehler charles@steinkuehler.net -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFIqYyELywbqEHdNFwRApUDAKCStrVVpFB+NeIomXGG6ewYgUCN9ACgwDig 8bLdArJIRao65GWq2zTwMro= =3FNv -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
On Monday 18 August 2008 09:20:34 Oren Beck wrote:
Many people I know are constant users of the portableapps suite. As it makes life easier in several ways.
Actually, it's just retarded. First of all, the term "portable" with regard to applications has already been used for decades to mean "compiles and runs on many variety of OS". I don't care what term they want to use, but they should at least not overlap with an already existing and commonly used term! Secondly, their "idea" is nothing much more than simply exporting HOME to the USB stick prior to executing applications off it... if the binaries themselves are truly portable, which is at best the case when the kernel syscalls are compatible, and never across BSD/Linux/Windows boundaries.
I had thought of using a USB HD resident distro in QEMU mode, began research on "how-to's" and found issues mitigating the full urility.Such as - QEMU mode distros to my research depend on unfree code in a windows environment at present. Is my understanding correct?
No. Qemu is GPL and cannot be linked with unfree code at all.
And public kiosk mode sites like the Kc Library might not let me load QEMU at all.
Kiosks generally won't let you load foreign binaries at all. Not just qemu, but also Thunderbird or anything else. If they allow executing arbitrary binaries, then qemu should work just fine out of the box.
On Mon, 2008-08-18 at 11:22 -0500, Luke Dashjr wrote:
Secondly, their "idea" is nothing much more than simply exporting HOME to the USB stick prior to executing applications off it... if the binaries themselves are truly portable, which is at best the case when the kernel syscalls are compatible, and never across BSD/Linux/Windows boundaries.
There is a bit more to it. The binaries are usually compiled as static and as a result depend on far fewer things in the host system. While I have yet to see a USB key containing apps to run on every system, I heard of successful attempts and building a USB flash suite that will run on Win/Mac/Linux by having the applicable binaries for each platform, but all sharing the same user data. While it may be impossible to hit 100% portability, it is possible to land above 75%.
No. Qemu is GPL and cannot be linked with unfree code at all.
Don't even go there. You can't *redistribute* it with unfree additions to the code. The GPL lets you link it against whatever you want.
Kiosks generally won't let you load foreign binaries at all. Not just qemu, but also Thunderbird or anything else. If they allow executing arbitrary binaries, then qemu should work just fine out of the box.
Qemu is a resource hog, and some of the features (like bridging network connectivity) don't work without admin privileges. So while Qemu might be just as likely to *run*, it doesn't mean it is just as likely to *work as intended*. ~Bradley
On Monday 18 August 2008, Bradley Hook wrote:
Qemu is GPL and cannot be linked with unfree code at all.
Don't even go there. You can't *redistribute* it with unfree additions to the code. The GPL lets you link it against whatever you want.
You can't redistribute it with such links. Context-- the scope of copyright law.
Kiosks generally won't let you load foreign binaries at all. Not just qemu, but also Thunderbird or anything else. If they allow executing arbitrary binaries, then qemu should work just fine out of the box.
Qemu is a resource hog, and some of the features (like bridging network connectivity) don't work without admin privileges. So while Qemu might be just as likely to *run*, it doesn't mean it is just as likely to *work as intended*.
Network bridging is an OS feature, so whether it requires admin privs or not is up to your OS. Thankfully, qemu doesn't *need* bridged networking for much anything.
participants (5)
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Bradley Hook -
Charles Steinkuehler -
Luke -Jr -
Luke Dashjr
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Oren Beck