I’ve been running into this problem a bunch lately, and can’t determine the cause:
I install a .deb package. The package shows installed in my installed software. But it simply doesn’t load.
The appimage of the same software loads. Which is fine, if there is an appimage. But there isn’t always that option.
I suspect its some kind of security feature of PureOs.
Anyone run into this problem? And have a fix?
I presume you’ve side-loaded it then (external package, not from repo). Most likely it doesn’t have necessary dependencies. Either dynamically linked or loaded libraries. Or it may even rely on some rootfs layout. Deb packages after all could be used in debian or ubuntu and those slightly differ.
Either way you need to undersand why doesn’t it load - need to find a way make it more verbose to enable it reporting errors. And then follow the clues in error and fix it.
If it doesn’t start at all - it may miss linked library - that may be checked with ldd /path/to/binary but such error is fatal and would be reported (if you try it in console). If it is not reported the launcher is likely a script and it fails before starting the binary (or otherwise conceals error reporting)
Take an example: I’m running skypeforlinux which I install on arch linux from deb. obviously arch does not support deb natively so I’m using ar + tar to extract the content and then I’ve created a script which pre-loads necessary libraries (which I sideloaded from steam runtime) to allow S4L to run
In the terminal type the following and hit enter:
sudo apt-get -f install
Once that completes, try running the software you just installed again.
Does it load?
For your information, this command tells apt-get to go an find the missing dependencies of programs you have installed, if there are any. It is a handy thing to use.
if you are using PureOS-10-Byzantium (not POS9-Amber-stable) then you can have more up to date dependencies installed with .deb files from outside the official repos’.
if you are on Amber then you better stick with the official repo or go to .AppImage / FlatPack for more up to date sw if you don’t know how to massage apt