bauh ( ba-oo ) is a graphical user interface to manage your Linux applications ( packages ) ( old fpakman ). It currently supports Flatpak, Snap, AppImage and AUR packaging types. When you launch bauh you will see a management panel where you can search, update, install, uninstall and launch applications. You can also downgrade some applications depending on the package technology.
It has a tray mode (see Settings below) that attaches the application icon to the system tray providing a quick way to launch it. Also the icon will get red when updates are available.
This project has an official Twitter account ( @bauh4linux ) so people can stay on top of its news.
Developed with:
- Python3 and Qt5.
Requirements
Debian-based distros
- python3.5 or above
- pip3
- python3-venv ( only for Manual installation described below )
Arch-based distros
- python
- python-requests
- python-pip
- python-pyqt5
Optional
-
flatpak: to be able to handle Flatpak applications
-
snapd: to be able to handle Snap applications
-
pacman: to be able to handle AUR packages
-
wget: to be able to handle AppImage and AUR packages
-
sqlite3: to be able to handle AppImage applications
-
git: to be able to downgrade AUR packages
-
aria2: faster AppImage and AUR source files downloading ( reduces packages installation time. More information below. )
-
libappindicator3: for the tray mode in GTK3 desktop environments
-
fuse may be required to run AppImages on your system.
Distribution
AUR
As bauh package. There is also a staging version (bauh-staging) but is intended for testing and may not work properly.
pip3 install bauh
It may require sudo, but prefer the Manual installation described below to not mess up with your system libraries.
Manual installation:
If you prefer a manual and isolated installation, type the following commands within the cloned project folder:
python3 -m venv env ( creates a virtualenv in a folder called **env** )
env/bin/pip install . ( installs the application code inside the **env** )
env/bin/bauh ( launches the application )
If you do not want to clone / download this repository, go to your Home folder and execute the commands above, but replace the second by env/bin/pip install bauh
.
Autostart
In order to autostart the application, use your Desktop Environment settings to register it as a startup application / script (bauh --tray=1).
Gems ( package technology support )
Flatpak ( flatpak gem )
- The user is able to search, install, uninstall, downgrade, launch and retrieve the applications history
Snap ( snap gem )
- The user is able to search, install, uninstall, refresh, launch and downgrade applications
AUR ( arch gem )
-
It is not enabled by default
-
The user is able to search, install, uninstall, downgrade, launch and retrieve the packages history
-
It handles conflicts, and missing / optional packages installations ( including from your distro mirrors )
-
If aria2 is installed on your system and multi-threaded downloads are enabled ( see BAUH_DOWNLOAD_MULTITHREAD ), the source packages will be pre-downloaded faster ( it does NOT modify your pacman settings ).
-
Automatically makes simple package compilation improvements:
a) if MAKEFLAGS is not set in /etc/makepkg.conf and ~/.makepkg.conf does not exist, then a copy of /etc/makepkg.conf will be generated at ~/.makepkg.conf defining MAKEFLAGS to work with the number of your machine processors (-j${nproc}).
b) same as previous, but related to COMPRESSXZ definition ( if '--threads=0' is not defined )
Obs: this feature can be disabled through the environment variable BAUH_ARCH_OPTIMIZE=0 ( For more information about these optimizations, check: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Makepkg )
-
Arch package memory-indexer running every 20 minutes. This memory index is used when AUR Api cannot handle the amount of results found for a given search. It can be disabled via the environment variable BAUH_ARCH_AUR_INDEX_UPDATER=0.
-
If some of your installed packages are not categorized, send an e-mail to bauh4linux@gmail.com informing their names and categories in the following format:
name=category1[,category2,category3,...]
AppImage ( appimage gem )
- The user is able to search, install, uninstall, downgrade, launch and retrieve the applications history
- Supported sources: AppImageHub ( applications with no releases published to GitHub are currently not available )
- Faster downloads if aria2c is installed. Same behavior described in the AUR support section.
- Installed applications are store at ~/.local/share/bauh/appimage/installed
- Desktop entries ( menu shortcuts ) of the installed applications are stored at ~/.local/share/applications
- Downloaded database files are stored at ~/.local/share/bauh/appimage as apps.db and releases.db
- Databases updater daemon running every 20 minutes. It can be disabled via the environment variable BAUH_APPIMAGE_DB_UPDATER=0.
- All supported application names can be found at: https://github.com/vinifmor/bauh-files/blob/master/appimage/apps.txt
Obs: There are some crashes when AppImageLauncher is installed. It is advisable to uninstall it and reboot the system before trying to install an AppImage application.
General settings
You can change some application settings via environment variables or arguments (type bauh --help
to get more information).
- BAUH_SYSTEM_NOTIFICATIONS: enable or disable system notifications. Use 0 (disable) or 1 (enable, default).
- BAUH_CHECK_INTERVAL: define the updates check interval in seconds. Default: 60.
- BAUH_LOCALE: define a custom app translation for a given locale key (e.g: 'pt', 'en', 'es', ...). Default: system locale.
- BAUH_CACHE_EXPIRATION: define a custom expiration time in SECONDS for cached API data. Default: 3600 (1 hour).
- BAUH_ICON_EXPIRATION: define a custom expiration time in SECONDS for cached icons. Default: 300 (5 minutes).
- BAUH_DISK_CACHE: enables / disables disk cache. When disk cache is enabled, the installed packages data are loaded faster. Use 0 (disable) or 1 (enable, default).
- BAUH_DOWNLOAD_ICONS: Enables / disables applications icons downloading. It may improve the application speed depending on how applications data are being retrieved. Use 0 (disable) or 1 (enable, default).
- BAUH_CHECK_PACKAGING_ONCE: If the availabilty of the supported packaging types should be checked only once. It improves the application speed if enabled, but can generate errors if you uninstall any packaging technology while using it, and every time a new supported packaging type is installed it will only be available after a restart. Use 0 (disable, default) or 1 (enable).
- BAUH_TRAY: If the tray icon and update-check daemon should be created. Use 0 (disable, default) or 1 (enable).
- BAUH_SUGGESTIONS: If application suggestions should be displayed if no package considered an application is installed (runtimes / libraries do not count as applications). Use 0 (disable) or 1 (enable, default).
- BAUH_MAX_DISPLAYED: Maximum number of displayed packages in the management panel table. Default: 50.
- BAUH_LOGS: enable bauh logs (for debugging purposes). Use: 0 (disable, default) or 1 (enable)
- BAUH_DOWNLOAD_MULTITHREAD: enable multi-threaded download for installation files ( only possible if aria2 is installed ). This feature reduces the application installation time. Use 0 (disable) or 1 (enabled, default).
- BAUH_TRAY_DEFAULT_ICON_PATH: define a custom icon for the tray mode ( absolute path)
- BAUH_TRAY_UPDATES_ICON_PATH define a custom updates icon for the tray mode ( absolute path)
How to improve bauh performance
- Disable package types that you do not want to deal with ( via GUI )
- If you don't care about restarting the app every time a new supported packaging technology is installed, set "check-packaging-once=1" (bauh --check-packaging-once=1). This can reduce the application response time up in some scenarios, since it won't need to recheck if the packaging type is available for every action you request.
- If you don't mind to see the applications icons, you can set "download-icons=0" (bauh --download-icons=0). The application may have a slight response improvement, since it will reduce the parallelism within it.
- Let the disk cache always enabled so bauh does not need to dynamically retrieve some data every time you launch it.
Files and Logs
- Some application settings are stored in ~/.config/bauh/config.json
- Installation logs are saved at /tmp/bauh/logs/install
- Some data about your installed applications are stored in ~/.cache/bauh to load them faster ( default behavior ).
bauh-files
- It is a separate repository with some files downloaded by bauh during runtime.
Code structure
Modules
view: code associated with the graphical interface
gems: code responsible to work with the different packaging technologies ( every submodule deals with one or more types )
api: code abstractions representing the main actions that a user can do with Linux packages (search, install, ...). These abstractions are implemented by the gems, and the view code is only attached to them (it does not know how the gems handle these actions)
commons: common code used by gems and view
Roadmap
- Support for other packaging technologies
- Separate modules for each packaging technology
- Memory and performance improvements
- Improve user experience