Cozy Drive on the GNU/Linux Desktop

Introduction

While porting the old file synchronization client to the new Cozy stack v3, we decided to focus on Windows and macOS because those were what most of our future users would be using.

But lots of our early-adopters were GNU/Linux users. And we are GNU/Linux users ourselves too. So we had to bring back GNU/Linux support at some point.

There are many GNU/Linux distributions out there, and even in the Cozy team people use many of them. Providing quality packages for everybody can be quite time consuming.

So we decided to start with a solution that was easy for us to set up: AppImage. Easy since it’s included in electron-builder, the tool we already use to generate the Windows and macOS apps.

User experience definitely won’t be the best (it will look a lot like good old proprietary driver install scripts). But it should at least work for most people and give us a way to quickly start getting feedback regarding other possible issues. And the app will auto-update the same way as the Windows or macOS ones.

We’ll provide packages for major distros as soon as possible (unofficial nightly builds for Debian and Ubuntu are already being tested internally).

Supported distributions

A few things to know:

The current AppImage needs a relatively recent versions of :
- GLIBC >= 2.32
- GLIBCXX >= 3.4.21
The application should work with most desktop manager but is actively tested on Gnome 3
The systray icon might only show up on some desktop managers if you use a third-party software like the TopIcons-Plus Gnome extension or libappindicator; it is up to you to install the third-party software if needed

We only support the latest version of each distribution although the app could work on older versions. The table below can be outdated.

Distribution	supported	comment
Fedora 38	yes
Debian 12 (Bookworm)	yes
Ubuntu 23.04 (Lunar Lobster)	yes
Linux Mint 21.2 (Victoria)	yes
Archlinux	yes	if up-to-date
Add your distribution (see below)	…
Fedora 37	no	should work
Debian 11 (Bullseye)	no	should work
Ubuntu 22.10 (Kinetic Kudu)	no	should work
Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish)	no	should work after installing FUSE (`sudo apt install libfuse2`)
Linux Mint 21.1 (Vera)	no	should work
Mageia 8	no	should work
openSUSE Leap 15.4	no	should work

Before requesting for your distribution to be added to the list, please:

Include the exact name and version of your distribution
Retrieve your GLIBC and GLIBCXX versions by running the following commands in a terminal:
- strings $(locate -b '\libstdc++.so.6') | grep '^GLIBCXX_[0-9.]*$' | sort -V | tail -n 1
- strings $(locate -b '\libstdc++.so.6') | grep '^GLIBC_[0-9.]*$' | sort -V | tail -n 1 (and include the output in your request)
Install the app, run it and make sure it actually works

If your distribution is not supported follow the manual build guide and jump to the second part of the Install section.

Install

Note for Archlinux Users

You can install cozy-desktop from the [community] repo.

Download the *.AppImage file for your architecture from the latest release.
You probably don’t want to keep the app in your /Downloads folder and run it from there. You can for example create a macOS-like Applications folder and move it there. Advanced users may prefer to move it to some special folder (~/.local/bin/, ~/bin/, /opt/…).

Integration with the system

By default, the application will only be launchable by double-clicking the AppImage file you downloaded. If you want it to be available in your applications menu, you can install the appimaged daemon, available from its github repository’s releases or via your distribution package manager. If you install it from the repository, you might need to run the following commands in a terminal to make sure it is run when starting your user session:

$ systemctl --user add-wants default.target appimaged
$ systemctl --user start appimaged
# restart your user session now

After that, any AppImage file found in one of those folders will be automatically made executable and available in your applications menu:

$HOME/Downloads (or its localized equivalent, as determined by G_USER_DIRECTORY_DOWNLOAD in glib)
$HOME/.local/bin
$HOME/bin
$HOME/Applications
/Applications
[any mounted partition]/Applications
/opt
/usr/local/bin

Running

If you have decided not to integrate AppImages with your system, you’ll need to make the file executable. In GNOME 3, right-click on the file, select the Properties menu entry, go to the Permissions tab and enable the Execution checkbox. Or in a terminal:

cd /dir/where/you/put/the/file && chmod +x *.AppImage`

On first run, the application should have configured itself to run automatically on system start.

Where are the application files?

Almost everything is in the *.AppImage file however, if you have installed appimaged, the following additional files are created:

Launcher file in ~/.local/share/applications/appimagekit_<unique identifier>-Cozy_Drive.desktop
Icons in ~/.local/share/icons/hicolor/*/apps/appimagekit<same unique identifier>-cozydrive.png

Everything else works the same as Windows or macOS: your synchronized files are in ~/Cozy Drive/ or the folder you choose on first run, and the hidden ~/.cozy-desktop/ folder contains the application configuration, metadata and logs.

Displaying the app window

To show the application preferences and the recently synchronized files list, you can either launch the app again (i.e. it will simply open the app’s window as only one instance can run at a time) or click on the systray icon. If libappindicator is installed on your system, left-clicks won’t have any effects so you need to do a right-click on the icon then select the Show Application menu entry.

Note for GNOME Users

From 3.26 onwards, GNOME removed the systray which is the only interface for Cozy Drive. It should be replaced in the future by libcloudprovider, which we will implement when it spreads. In the meantime, you need to install an extension providing support for appindicator. You can find and install one from https://extensions.gnome.org/ by searching for appindicator.

Note for i3wm Users

You can set "gui": {"visibleOnBlur": true} in your ~/.cozy-desktop/config.json so the popover doesn’t hide when focusing another window.

Uninstall

Manually remove the files listed above.