[FR]: .deb binaries

[kamikazechaser]

Description

Support installing via .deb binaries

Who's implementing?

• I'm willing to implement this feature myself

The problem

Generally most browsers are shipped via .deb on Debian based distros.

I would love to install Helium via a repo or even downloadable .deb pakcaged binaries.

sudo apt update && sudo apt install extrepo -y

sudo extrepo enable helium

sudo apt update && sudo apt install helium -y

Possible solutions

• salsa.debian.org/extrepo-team/extrepo
• https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium-debian

Additional context

No response

[Twig6943]

Why not use the AppImage? Distro specific packages shouldn't be maintained in 2025? (At least GUI apps like this)

[kamikazechaser]

Auto-updates. AppImage isn't bad though. An argument could be made for performance i.e. FUSE/SquashFS coolboot overhead (maybe some minimal runtime overhead) as compared to extracting to my ext4 directly. But that's stretching it.

[wukko]

AppImage supports auto updates, and helium provides everything necessary for you to set it up: https://docs.appimage.org/packaging-guide/optional/updates.html

you can use something like gear lever for ease of use

[Twig6943]

Auto-updates.

AppImage package managers do exist they're just not known (am,soar,dbin)

An argument could be made for performance i.e. FUSE/SquashFS coolboot overhead (maybe some minimal runtime overhead) as compared to extracting to my ext4 directly. But that's stretching it.

Something that's barely noticeable that's not worth maintaining a package. It's still your call to make lol.

[KaKi87]

Hi,

Some time ago, I started developing a tool named dynapt to automatically fetch updates through APT for packages that don't provide an APT repository.

As it's still experimental, you can download the latest pre-release of it and set it up from this tutorial.

For Helium specifically, replace the following configuration line :

    "apps": []

With the following :

    "apps": [
        {
            "name": "Helium Browser",
            "github": {
                "repo": "imputnet/helium-linux",
                "filter": "*-x86_64.AppImage",
                "prerelease": true
            },
            "appimage": true,
            "id": "c4087b7f-19d2-4cb9-a333-6ab08242b72f"
        }
    ]

Replace x86_64 with arm64 if applicable.

Enjoy !

[arvaidasre]

Hello i make .deb file https://github.com/arvaidasre/helium-browser-deb and ,rpm file :)

[DaRandomCube]

Why not use the AppImage? Distro specific packages shouldn't be maintained in 2025? (At least GUI apps like this)

The problem with is that it relies on an unmaintained dependency (fuse2) which is bad for security, and they kept using that for so long

Flatpak won't work here because it cripples chromium sandboxing

Leaving us with only 2 valid option, either have it installing to ~/.local/bin like zed for example, or have native packages

[wukko]

The problem with is that it relies on an unmaintained dependency (fuse2)

wrong, see: imputnet/helium#653 (comment)