TOO HOT TO HANDLE
All of our picks this month are actively maintained open source projects with large audiences and constant userprovided feedback. The question is: what’s the best way of trying a HotPick? Not that it was unanswered before, since we’ve published a comprehensive tutorial on building various software out of its source code (see LXF256), but this is a good opportunity to provide a few more tips on the topic.
Modern Linux distributions normally have huge software repositories made up of thousands of packages. There’s a good chance that the program you’re looking for has already been packaged and is provided through the official channel of your distro. If not, check if the developer provides a ready-to-run download option under the Releases section on the GitHub page. Sometimes there’s just an archive that you’re supposed to unpack and run the program from, which is the case for Waterfox, in one of our greatest HotPicks this month.
Still no luck so far? Try to find a Snap, a Flatpak or an Appimage of the software. These formats represent three main ways of delivering a sandboxed version of a Linux application. As for Snap and Flatpak, you’ll need to have appropriate back-ends installed on your system.
If you’re running a Linux distro that doesn’t have a store for such sandboxed programs, then don’t miss the outstanding Bauh software store (see LXF266), which enables you to explore, install and manage applications in any of the aforementioned software formats. And remember that building something from source isn’t as scary as it sounds – it’s usually nothing more taxing than typing a couple of commands.