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What do you guys do when you want to run unmaintained programs? (lemmy.world)
submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by renzev@lemmy.world to c/linuxmemes@lemmy.world
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I recently wanted to run tegaki, and my experience is pretty much summed up by the meme. I consider myself fairly tech-savvy, but I just couldn't figure out how to compile it. So I just gave up, downloaded the .exe and put it into a fresh wine prefix. After installing CJK fonts, everything ran fine. Now I'm trying to get gpaint to work. ~~My distro recently dropped support for gtk+2 (which I am fairly pissed about, since it's the last good version of GTK+), so I have to set that up manually as well.~~ [[[ EDIT: gtk2 is alive and well. I was just being and idiot and searching for gtk2, when the package is actually called gtk+2. ]]] I installed all of the dependencies that ./configure told me to, but I still kept getting obscure errors when running make.

So, here's my question: what tools make the process of running abandonware easier? Docker containers? Also, what can I use to package abandonware in order to make it easy for other people to run? Flatpak? Appimages? Any advice is appreciated!

Also, inb4 "just find a modern alternative". That would be a reasonable solution. I don't want reasonable solutions!

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[-] observantTrapezium@lemmy.ca 92 points 11 months ago

Pull a docker image of an old distro into an apptainer sandbox, install what you need within, then make a .sif image, should work pretty much in perpetuity. You can also try to make an Appimage.

[-] sturlabragason@lemmy.world 43 points 11 months ago

That's what DistroBox is for: https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox

[-] huskypenguin@sh.itjust.works 3 points 11 months ago

I was coming here to post this.

[-] renzev@lemmy.world 17 points 11 months ago

TIL about sif. Thanks, will give it a try!

[-] Alborlin@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

I am a beginner Linux user, if above scenario happens to me , I will not know what the hell you are talking about and just get windows, the linux community , here does not support the average user even in memes.

[-] observantTrapezium@lemmy.ca 4 points 10 months ago

This was just an outline of what you could do in the scenario, not a full solution. Looking up the keywords, "Apptainer" (+sandbox), ".sif", and "AppImage" should give you a starting point, and any specific questions can be answered separately. You are right that people could be jerks to beginners but this is rarely the intent. Not all discourse about Linux has to be at a beginner level, and packaging legacy software is not really a beginner topic.

[-] monobot@lemmy.ml 2 points 10 months ago

I am using linux for 20+ years and don't understand what they said. And I don't even want to, I was using wine to run open source software before flatpak, when I need it once a year.

this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2024
533 points (98.5% liked)

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