[FR]: Publish on Flathub

[kttrickster]

Description

Package Helium as Flatpak and publish on Flathub app store.

Who's implementing?

• I'm willing to implement this feature myself

The problem

Most browsers on Linux are distributed via Flathub: Brave, Ungoogled Chromium, Zen and so on.

Flatpak allows developers to build a single package for all Linux distributions, and users can easily install them via built-in graphical frontends in their desktop environments. Flatpak also manages updates and sandboxing (which may cause issues for extensions relying on system integration).

AppImage can't auto-update itself without external tools, and must be downloaded from a website.

Possible solutions

Package Helium as Flatpak and publish on Flathub app store.

Additional context

No response

[Its-Satyajit]

what about a script that is going to check for update before launch? like this

helium-chromium-launcher

i am using this script from version 0.4.5.1 (.tar.gz) working fine for me.

[5b3a]

You can use gearlever to manage appimages
It provides an out of the box update solution for appimages and some useful settings such as managing metadata, app icon etc..

[gxanshu]

It seems like the Chromium browser doesn’t need extra dependencies to run. If you use the binary from the .tar.gz file, it works fine without installing anything else.

AppImages are also generally faster than Flatpaks, so it would be nice if we had proper docs or a guide to install the AppImage version of the browser.

[wukko]

it would be nice if we had proper docs or a guide to install the AppImage version of the browser.

i personally use https://github.com/mijorus/gearlever on my linux machine

[gxanshu]

@wukko lets just mention this on Readme or on site.

Not sure how many people actually uses appImage.

Everyone is just install with flatpak

[tulilirockz]

I'm trying to make a flatpak manifest myself, do ya'll know if theres a way to use a pre-fetched .tar.xz file for the build instead of fetching it during the build?

[valerie-tar-gz]

Flatpak is increasingly popular (Look at stuff like the Steam Deck) and certain distros don't even support Appimage by default. Having another popular, universal and (arguably) better format as an option to install Helium would be very appealing.

[valerie-tar-gz]

The current AppImage also relies of FUSE 2, which is unmaintained and at the mercy of distros to support. This will only get worse.

[talal]

Hi @dumbmoron and @wukko

I've submitted the Flatpak for Helium to Flathub: flathub/flathub#7030

I've requested the Flathub maintainers to also add you both with collaborator permissions to Helium's Flatpak repo so that you also have write access.

Currently Helium's Flatpak description has the following disclaimer:

Note: This is a community package of Helium. It is not verified by, affiliated with, or supported by Helium developers.

Once you review the package files (around 200 lines of YAML and XML) and give me your go ahead then I will remove this disclaimer.