Description: Imagine a .rpm or .deb that you can run directly without installing it: that's .cmg
The advantages are numerous: * No more software installations * One single .cmg file per application * Total transparency about what is installed where (one .cmg file per app) * You can store .cmg files where you want (HD, USB stick, CD-ROM, DVD) and run them from there * Efficient use of storage space due to .cmg compression (saves 50%) * No possibility to destroy anything (all is contained in a read-only .cmg file) * Easy to give an application to a friend (just mail one .cmg file) * Easy to keep your additional applications if you upgrade or change the base Operating System or move to another machine * Makes it possible to run additional applications on Live CDs such as Knoppix or Kanotix * If something doesn't work, simply remove one .cmg file and everything is reverted * No need to be root in order to run new software
The hard part about .cmg compressed application images is to create them. There are thousands of applications out there that need to be repackaged as .cmg files. Fortunately, there is an advanced technology available that can automate this process: klik.
klik is the KDE-based Live Installer for Knoppix, Kanotix and mepis. From the point-and-klik software store, you can install applications simply with a klik (even without the need for a hard disk).
More information: http://klik.atekon.de/docs/Last changelog:
December 19, 2006
* Version numbers throughout the site * Bugfixes and reliability improvements
June 1, 2006
* Started to categorize software in a hierarchy like "Topic > Games/Entertainment > Puzzle Games" * Software in each category is ordered by popularity * See http://klik.atekon.de/trove.php
May 5, 2006
* More and more screenshots
Feb 1, 2006
* Entire suite of KOffice 1.5 beta applications online in collaboration with KOffice team
Dec 4, 2005
* i18n localized package descriptions from DDTP
Nov 7, 2005
* Recipe updates
October 2, 2005
* Celebrating 100,000th klik download
September 2005
* Major updates in all areas * Initial GNOME support
I'd love to see another klik install behaviour:
Currently klik installs applications to Desktop. So you have a desktop entry .cmg with a non-changeable icon.
I always move the klik application from my desktop to ~/klik and then make a url link to it on my desktop. That way I can get rid of the .cmg ending on my desktop and can give the application a nice icon.
It would be great if that would be the default or at least configurable behaviour.
Wow.
I never really cared about klik, it sounded just... too easy. However, today I visited http://klik.atekon.de/ and thought "Why not try it out?".
I did the installtion - omg, first good impression. No trouble at all, easy and fast. This is how it should be!
Tried to download a game. Nope, dependencies problems right? Whoa! The game started without a problem. It's just fantastic!
The only thing that I dislike is the desktop thing. It's ok to have as default, but I want them to go elsewhere. I tried to create the alterantive configure file, but it doesn't seem to work. :/
located at ~/~/.klikrc
-----------------------------------
# Sample ~/.klikrc file
# This is optional and not needed by most users
# The following line makes klik save cmg files
# in another directory instead of the default (desktop)
export DESTINATION=$HOME/Program/klik
-----------------------------------
I have just made a supid mistake somewhere, right? Please tell me where. And thanks for this awesome... thing.
klik is great.
It's working even on my gentoo, i've run realplayer, lphoto and a bunch of other apps by simply clicking on a link!
I'm recommending it to everybody and really hope all the ideas to improve it come true... a .app appfile that integrates with my desktop would be just too cool
Seriously, there's no single reason i can find not to love this project :-)
A point&click cramfs/.cmg maker would be very useful for archiving. Since k3b won't let you burn your home directory to iso9660 format (due to odd filenames etc) you have to tar/gzip your home dir up. This makes it very time consuming to browse for and extract a particular file as Konqueror has to parse the whole tar.gz. The ability to make an archive which could be browsed in realtime would be very handy.
I always thought Grunge was cool.
Not for everyone, but cool. And so it was with Linux. I liked Linux because it was cool; the Grunge of the desktop.
In the past Linux has been for a small subset of PC enthusiasts.
klik changes that. klik is huge. klik is the final piece that makes Linux a comfy fit for lots of people.
Techies may quibble about some of the details, but klik adds a streak of simplicity into what can be an overwhelming operating system. It's a new option that suits me fine much of the time; I now use Kanotix daily as my main OS.
Grunge is still cool [Go PJ!], but Linux may become too easy, which will be uncool - more useful than ever, but less cool. Linux will simply be the powerful, user-friendly platform upon which my hobby rests.
Advice for Simon Peter: Don't react to criticism. Stick with your concept. Remember, klik users are too busy using their software to hang out in forums.
Hats off to Atekon, the hosting sponsor. Atekon may have been the first to recognize that klik and the people who put it together are winners.
My current preferences are still source if reasonably possible, or rpm otherwise...my understanding is that you are running apps compressed? Myself I'm not big on compressed stuff cause it eats up resources but you have a great idea. Maybe you could set it up to have an option to create a partition, directory, or file that is decompressed yet still read only? It's a good solution until Linux recovers from it's current state of distribution madness. Too many distros, think, if everyone stopped re-inventing the wheel and got together on 1 or 5 projects instead of 100 we could have some real sweet, yet novel distros.
Seemingly everyone is hung up on undecipherable 3 letter file extensions. Why did you not pick .klik?
Not to belittle your invention, it's cool =) Just I've yet to see anyone use sensible file extensions in the entirety of software. Oh actually the autopackage guys picked .package, and I applaud them for their choice.
Klik is simply great!!
It is so easy!!
Like today, on irc rikva told me about yakuake, which he installed on ubuntu using klik://yakuake.
I asked him to mail the .cmg image to me, and seconds later I ran yakuake on my desktop without any hassle.
Also the difference between distributions (i run suse, he runs ubuntu) was no issue for the cmg-file :)
Hmm, that sounds far more complicated
And besides that, with "Emerge" you are actually installing yakuake, while with "Klik" that is not the case at all ;)
Rinse
However could we have some option of combining globally installed libraries(using rpms) in locally installed software(using klik), or klik will always copy every dependency with it?
Being able to install one app inside another installed using kipi would be probably usefull for pluggin supported apps probably!! (e.g Digikam and kipi-plugins)
klik already uses globally installed components, such as KDE itself. Hence, only components that are not commonly part of the base system become part of the cmg.
The main philosophy behind klik is "1 application = 1 file". Hence, plugins should be part of the corresponding application. GIMP, for example, comes with plugins, and they are all part of gimp.cmg.
I think that the idea is good, but it has a wrong target, it mounts and manages cmg file while it should give users the ability to manipulate AppDirs directly like MacOSX and ROX instead of mounting the cmg file and running the app from there
the cmg file it's good to distribute the app though
also this thing it's already supported from rox so it's only a matter of giving AppDir support to KDE and Gnome (and maybe XFCE) to have a fairly decent package manager that it's distribution indipendent at least for binary packages (mostly for commercial apps, like skype that distributes an actually broken debian package)
Having 1 file per application (instead of 1 directory) actually has a lot of advantages:
* Applications are stored compressed at all times, you get ~50% hard disk space savings, which is quite a bit for applications like OpenOffice.org
* No need to unpack
* You can easily e-mail cmg files
I agree cmg are good for redistributing apps, but the current implementation of mounting them in loopback into /tmp it's a little mess, on the other side AppDirs are million times polished and easier to use, if you tried ROX at least one time you know what I mean, I don't understand why there is the need to reinvent the wheel....
>Applications are stored compressed at all >times, you get ~50% hard disk space savings But as Applications comes with a lot of libs, you don't get any hard disk savings. Package will still be the good way to do. Klik is really good for testing of having the last version of a soft.
Having cmg files read-only is a feature, not a bug: this way you can trust that applications cannot modify themselves, and the user can't accidentially break anything. (If you want to modify cmg files anyway, please read the klik documentation - it's easy.)
Ratings & Comments
40 Comments
I'd love to see another klik install behaviour: Currently klik installs applications to Desktop. So you have a desktop entry .cmg with a non-changeable icon. I always move the klik application from my desktop to ~/klik and then make a url link to it on my desktop. That way I can get rid of the .cmg ending on my desktop and can give the application a nice icon. It would be great if that would be the default or at least configurable behaviour.
This is possible by using a (unsupported) configuration file: http://klik.atekon.de/wiki/index.php/Configuration_file
Wow. I never really cared about klik, it sounded just... too easy. However, today I visited http://klik.atekon.de/ and thought "Why not try it out?". I did the installtion - omg, first good impression. No trouble at all, easy and fast. This is how it should be! Tried to download a game. Nope, dependencies problems right? Whoa! The game started without a problem. It's just fantastic! The only thing that I dislike is the desktop thing. It's ok to have as default, but I want them to go elsewhere. I tried to create the alterantive configure file, but it doesn't seem to work. :/ located at ~/~/.klikrc ----------------------------------- # Sample ~/.klikrc file # This is optional and not needed by most users # The following line makes klik save cmg files # in another directory instead of the default (desktop) export DESTINATION=$HOME/Program/klik ----------------------------------- I have just made a supid mistake somewhere, right? Please tell me where. And thanks for this awesome... thing.
"located at ~/~/.klikrc" It should of course be "~/.klikrc".
I think that's a very useful and userfriendly project. Thank you for the great work and go on like that.
very good and user user friendly! nice work!
klik is great. It's working even on my gentoo, i've run realplayer, lphoto and a bunch of other apps by simply clicking on a link! I'm recommending it to everybody and really hope all the ideas to improve it come true... a .app appfile that integrates with my desktop would be just too cool Seriously, there's no single reason i can find not to love this project :-)
A point&click cramfs/.cmg maker would be very useful for archiving. Since k3b won't let you burn your home directory to iso9660 format (due to odd filenames etc) you have to tar/gzip your home dir up. This makes it very time consuming to browse for and extract a particular file as Konqueror has to parse the whole tar.gz. The ability to make an archive which could be browsed in realtime would be very handy.
I always thought Grunge was cool. Not for everyone, but cool. And so it was with Linux. I liked Linux because it was cool; the Grunge of the desktop. In the past Linux has been for a small subset of PC enthusiasts. klik changes that. klik is huge. klik is the final piece that makes Linux a comfy fit for lots of people. Techies may quibble about some of the details, but klik adds a streak of simplicity into what can be an overwhelming operating system. It's a new option that suits me fine much of the time; I now use Kanotix daily as my main OS. Grunge is still cool [Go PJ!], but Linux may become too easy, which will be uncool - more useful than ever, but less cool. Linux will simply be the powerful, user-friendly platform upon which my hobby rests. Advice for Simon Peter: Don't react to criticism. Stick with your concept. Remember, klik users are too busy using their software to hang out in forums. Hats off to Atekon, the hosting sponsor. Atekon may have been the first to recognize that klik and the people who put it together are winners.
My current preferences are still source if reasonably possible, or rpm otherwise...my understanding is that you are running apps compressed? Myself I'm not big on compressed stuff cause it eats up resources but you have a great idea. Maybe you could set it up to have an option to create a partition, directory, or file that is decompressed yet still read only? It's a good solution until Linux recovers from it's current state of distribution madness. Too many distros, think, if everyone stopped re-inventing the wheel and got together on 1 or 5 projects instead of 100 we could have some real sweet, yet novel distros.
You can easily unpack the cmg file - then you have a ROX-compliant AppDir.
Seemingly everyone is hung up on undecipherable 3 letter file extensions. Why did you not pick .klik? Not to belittle your invention, it's cool =) Just I've yet to see anyone use sensible file extensions in the entirety of software. Oh actually the autopackage guys picked .package, and I applaud them for their choice.
Klik is simply great!! It is so easy!! Like today, on irc rikva told me about yakuake, which he installed on ubuntu using klik://yakuake. I asked him to mail the .cmg image to me, and seconds later I ran yakuake on my desktop without any hassle. Also the difference between distributions (i run suse, he runs ubuntu) was no issue for the cmg-file :)
Gentoo rocks too, rename ebuild to actual version, say ebuild yakuake-${PV}.ebuild digest && emerge yakuake.
Hmm, that sounds far more complicated And besides that, with "Emerge" you are actually installing yakuake, while with "Klik" that is not the case at all ;) Rinse
Yeah, of course, and now tell me: ,,applications are faster" and I goin' to mad. :D
yeah, klik is wonderful. i had a similar experience don't feed the troll :>
However could we have some option of combining globally installed libraries(using rpms) in locally installed software(using klik), or klik will always copy every dependency with it? Being able to install one app inside another installed using kipi would be probably usefull for pluggin supported apps probably!! (e.g Digikam and kipi-plugins)
klik already uses globally installed components, such as KDE itself. Hence, only components that are not commonly part of the base system become part of the cmg. The main philosophy behind klik is "1 application = 1 file". Hence, plugins should be part of the corresponding application. GIMP, for example, comes with plugins, and they are all part of gimp.cmg.
I think that the idea is good, but it has a wrong target, it mounts and manages cmg file while it should give users the ability to manipulate AppDirs directly like MacOSX and ROX instead of mounting the cmg file and running the app from there the cmg file it's good to distribute the app though
also this thing it's already supported from rox so it's only a matter of giving AppDir support to KDE and Gnome (and maybe XFCE) to have a fairly decent package manager that it's distribution indipendent at least for binary packages (mostly for commercial apps, like skype that distributes an actually broken debian package)
Having 1 file per application (instead of 1 directory) actually has a lot of advantages: * Applications are stored compressed at all times, you get ~50% hard disk space savings, which is quite a bit for applications like OpenOffice.org * No need to unpack * You can easily e-mail cmg files
I agree cmg are good for redistributing apps, but the current implementation of mounting them in loopback into /tmp it's a little mess, on the other side AppDirs are million times polished and easier to use, if you tried ROX at least one time you know what I mean, I don't understand why there is the need to reinvent the wheel....
>Applications are stored compressed at all >times, you get ~50% hard disk space savings But as Applications comes with a lot of libs, you don't get any hard disk savings. Package will still be the good way to do. Klik is really good for testing of having the last version of a soft.
Having cmg files read-only is a feature, not a bug: this way you can trust that applications cannot modify themselves, and the user can't accidentially break anything. (If you want to modify cmg files anyway, please read the klik documentation - it's easy.)