Plasma/Neon, Discover, Flatpak, and Geopard: Close, But No Cigar
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2022-08-15 07:26:28 UTC
- Modified: 2022-08-15 07:26:28 UTC
Video download link | md5sum 68fef03872496a85cdaf516f6247c9c2
Installing the Geopard Gemini Client
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0
Summary: There are more and more options these days for browsing/navigating Geminispace and there's even a new Gemini client called Geopard; a Flatpak exists for it
THE number of clients for Gemini Protocol keeps increasing. So does the number of such clients (some call them "browsers") that are prepackaged for GNU/Linux distros. Debian GNU/Linux has several already, so the same goes for Devuan.
The state of installers on GNU/Linux improved a lot. AppImage, Snap, Flatpak are bloat, they're a shortcut that bypasses complexity associated with "proper" packaging, but do they generally work? Sometimes.
The above demonstrates that installing Gemini clients in GNU/Linux got simpler (Lagrange for example), but packaging things the IBM/Red Hat way leaves much to be desired, as the author of Geopard notes.
In my case, I've already installed about 10 different Gemini clients and used more than these. But in the case of Geopard I could not get it to run, only to install. Flatpaks are not just executable that run like ordinary binaries, so debugging this isn't so simple either. Maybe others will be more lucky, but for now I'm unable to properly review this piece of software.
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