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What is an Appimage on Linux?

An appimage (.appimage extension) is a type of file on Linux that contains a whole application or program. It's analogous to an .exe file on Windows.

A file's icon of the Krita application, under it the filename: krita-5.2.9-x86_64.AppImage.
An appimage file for the Krita application, as seen on Linux Mint's Cinnamon's file manager, Nemo. Observe how Krita's icon is displayed, meaning that this type of file is treated specially when deciding which icon to display for the file.

Appimages, flatpaks, and snaps are intended to package entire applications including their dependencies so that they can work in any Linux distribution. If an appimage is misconfigured (not all dependencies are included), it won't display any error message when it crashes on startup. This can happen, and unfortunately often DOES happen, if the developer uses a different distro than you.

Written by Noel Santos.

About the Author

I'm a self-taught Brazilian programmer graduated in IT from a FATEC. In a world of increasingly complex and essential computers, I decided to use my technical expertise in hardware, desktop applications, and web technologies to create an informative resource to make PC's easier to understand.

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