Linux

Ubuntu 22.04 breaks AppImages (at least right out of the box)

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Image Credit: Microsoft Copilot & OpenAI Dall-E 3

Canonical released Ubuntu 22.04 on 21 April, 2022 their long term support (LTS) version.

IMO, it's a really nice release, especially for me upgrading from 20.04 (dark mode, yay!) but one curious quirk I've noticed: AppImages don't work right out of the box.

Launching (after allowing 'Execute' under 'Permissions' for the AppImage file) from the desktop GUI via double-click-to-run showed no response.

Launching via the terminal with the "./filename.AppImage" command revealed the problem:

dlopen(): error loading libfuse.so.2
AppImages require FUSE to run.

Screenshot of the terminal when launching the AppImage, along with the error message.

 

The web URL leads to the FUSE wiki on AppImage's Github page, where it states right away:

AppImages require FUSE version 2 to run. Filesystem in Userspace (FUSE) is a system that lets non-root users mount filesystems.

Screenshot of the FUSE wiki on AppImage's Github page

Wiki documentation is excellent, with the installation steps listed right away:
sudo apt install fuse libfuse2

Screenshot of the terminal output after running 'sudo apt install fuse libfuse2'

The install is quick and I can confirm that AppImages now do launch on double-click via the GUI.

Side note: The FUSE wiki mentions additional steps related to user permissions, etc. which I didn't have to run. These commands might be required based on your installation / OS environment.

Here's Balena Etcher, the AppImage I was trying to launch.

Screenshot of the AppImage which now launched successfuly.

Success indeed.

Now let me get on to formatting my disks and re-installing Ubuntu from scratch. Because I forgot to turn on full-disk encryption during the setup process. 🤦🏼‍♂️

Side notes

Installing fuse2 removes fuse3, which was already available in Ubuntu 22.04.

From the terminal output when installing libfuse2

Removing fuse3 (3.10.5-1build1) ...

So this is technically a downgrade?

And this was an interesting exchange on Twitter, make what you will of it:

Reply from Ubuntu-MATE on Twitter. Link to tweet.
Reply from @probonopd on Twitter. Link to tweet.

 

And of course I checked out the release notes from Ubuntu-MATE, it does support AppImage right out of the box.

Closing thoughts

I will freely admit, having no response when AppImages were launched via the GUI had me stumped for a while.

This seems to have largly flown under the radar, haven't seen a lot of chatter about this on Twitter. I guess its not that big of a deal / users are already aware of this. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Either way, this is a quick write up that might hopefully guide others who might be stuck wondering about this.

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