Creating an AppImage-Store with peer-to-peer network

Developers
1

Please describe.
As a new Linux user, I am using Fedora 33 (GNOME) for the first time on my Notebook.

When I read about AppImage, it seemed very familiar to me because the concept is very similar to .apk file from Android. On Android there are many alternative Android App-Store where you can directly download the .apk file and there are methods that the downloaded apps are also installed automatically, an example is the Aurora Store with Aurora Service.

Unfortunately, e.g. on Fedora 33 (GNOME) and other Linux distrubation there is no default integrated AppImage-Store.

Describe the solution you’d like
It would be unique if the AppImage developers can create an AppImage-Store so that the Linux distributions developers can integrate it by default for the users.

The AppImage-Store should initially offer only open source app and later when it becomes more popular commercial companies can also offer their AppImage version.

For the open source app, the developer can connect directly to AppImage-Store without intermediaries. So the users can directly download the latest version, it is also possible to download alpha or beta version.

Additional context
It would also be a good idea to develop an AppImage store with peer-to-peer technology. The advantage is that when millions or more users use it, there are no typical problems like with a central server.
There are other user cases, I could imagine that in the future more mobile Linux systems will be used, e.g. Plasma Mobile.

I have read that this is possible because of WebTorrent and BTFS (BitTorrent File System).

2

We want to educate users to always get software directly from the original authors, not from some “middleman” app store.

This is why on https://appimage.github.io/ we are linking directly to the original application author’s download pages.

1 Like
3

"The AppImage-Store should initially offer only open source app "

May i ask you why you think this?

I somehow agree with probono that downloading from authors download pages seems to be the best, it’s not a good way for software discovery.

By the way, alternative Android stores work technically, but they are a total failure if you really want to distribute an app. You get maybe 0,0001% of the people. Talk with any App Developer who tried it. Not even most nerds looking for general nerd apps will use them.

4

Personally I always download directly from the application download page, not from any store. E.g., for Android, Index of /videolan/vlc-android/