Tuxery
Docs· Glossary

Glossary

The words Tuxery uses on app pages and in filters, in plain language. Each entry can be linked to directly (hover a heading for its # link). The technical version of this vocabulary lives in the catalog's product families document.

Apps and their variants

App

One piece of software, shown as one card and one page — whatever the number of places it is packaged in. Firefox is one app even though Flathub, the Snap Store, Debian, Fedora, the AUR and a dozen others each ship it. Tuxery's data calls this a product.

Edition

A parallel line of an app that lives its own life next to the main one and never merges back into it: Firefox ESR (extended support) and Firefox Developer Edition, Java 17 and Java 21, an LTS line. The main line is called Standard. The Edition picker only appears on an app page when there is more than one.

Version

How mature a release is, inside one edition:

  • Stable — the regular release, the default.
  • Candidate — the next stable release, in its last round of testing.
  • Beta — a preview of upcoming features; mostly works, may break.
  • Nightly — rebuilt from the latest code every day or so; expect bugs.
  • Git — built straight from the project's development branch.

Firefox Beta and Nightly are versions of Firefox; Firefox ESR is an edition. The Version picker only appears when there is more than one. The release number (128.3.1) is shown next to each install option, as the package manager reports it.

Other builds

Technical variants of the same release, for niche needs: a prebuilt upstream binary repackaged (bin), an AppImage repackaged as a distro package, a build with extra patches (vaapi), a full build in another language, a 32-bit build, an old release kept on purpose (pinned, shown with a warning). They are folded under "other builds" rather than shown as separate apps.

Channel

A word stores use for what Tuxery splits into edition and version. A Snap channel such as latest/edge is the Standard edition, Nightly version; v11/stable is edition 11, Stable. Tuxery does not use "channel" itself, because stores put very different things behind it.

Add-on

Something that is not usable on its own and extends one app: a browser or editor extension, a plugin, a theme, a language pack, a dictionary, a native-messaging host, a configuration package. Add-ons are listed on their app's page, not as cards of their own. The catalog calls them companions.

Links between two different apps, shown on both pages:

  • Fork of — a separate project that started from the other's code (LibreWolf from Firefox).
  • Replaces — the declared successor of another app.
  • Unofficial client of — a wrapper or third-party client around another product.
  • Part of — a component of a suite (LibreOffice Writer, part of LibreOffice).
  • Tool for — a standalone app that works on another app's data.

Every link needs evidence: something the packages themselves declare, or an entry reviewed by hand. Tuxery never links apps because their names look alike.

Who built it

Provenance

Who produced the files you install. Shown as a badge on each install option — a piece of information, never a filter:

  • Official build — built by the project or vendor itself.
  • Distribution build — rebuilt from source by the distribution (Debian, Fedora, Arch...). The normal case for distro packages.
  • Community repack — the project's own binaries, repackaged by a community maintainer (AUR -bin packages, for example).
  • Community build, patched — built by a community maintainer with extra patches.

When Tuxery has no reliable signal, no badge is shown: unknown is not the same as official.

Verified

The publisher's identity was checked by the store itself. Today that is Flathub's verified developers, shown as a Verified badge. It says who publishes the app on that store, not that the code was audited.

Official

See provenance: an official build comes from the project itself. A distribution build is not "unofficial" in a worrying sense — it is how most Linux software reaches users.

Project activity

Actively maintained, Slowing down, Inactive

How recently the project itself published a release, shown next to "Updated" on a product page:

  • Actively maintained: a release within the last 6 months.
  • Slowing down: the last release is between 6 months and 2 years old.
  • Inactive: the last release is more than 2 years old.

The rule looks at the date of the newest release, not at how many there are: a mature project that ships once a year is still alive. The date is the project's own release, as its AppStream metadata states it — never a distribution's rebuild of an old version. An app without a release date gets no label rather than a guess, and "Inactive" says nothing about whether the software still works, only that nobody has released a new version lately.

Age ratings

Age rating

The minimum age Tuxery shows for an app (All ages, 3+, 12+, 18+, ...). Stores rate apps in different systems, so Tuxery puts them on one scale, the minimum age in years:

  • OARS, used by Flathub and the distributions' app catalogs, lists how much of each kind of content an app has (cartoon violence, language, online chat, gambling, ...). Each one implies an age in the table Common Sense Media published and GNOME Software uses; the app's age is the highest among them.
  • PEGI, ESRB and USK, used by GOG for games, are already ages.

When sources disagree, the strictest age is shown: a source that rated an app higher saw something the others may have missed. Hover the badge to see what each source said. The age describes how much mature content an app declares, not whether it is safe, and an app that no source rated has no badge rather than "All ages".

Licenses

Free software

Software whose license lets anyone use, study, share and modify it — the GPL, MIT, Apache, BSD and Mozilla licenses, among others. An app gets the Free software badge when every part of its license is one of these. What each one lets you do: open-source licenses explained.

Proprietary

Software whose license keeps those rights from you: you may use it, under its publisher's terms, but not share or modify it. An app gets the Proprietary badge only when its license says so explicitly (an EULA, a commercial license).

Sources spell the same license many ways, and some only say "custom" or "unknown". When Tuxery can't tell, no badge is shown — the license as the source published it is still listed on the app's page.

Where apps come from

Source

One place Tuxery reads app listings from: a store (Flathub), a distribution's package repository (Debian), a community repository (AUR) or a vendor's own repository. See the list of sources.

Store

A source with its own browsable storefront: Flathub, the Snap Store, elementary AppCenter, GOG, Lutris.

Distribution (distro)

A complete Linux operating system — Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch Linux, openSUSE, Mint... Each ships its own repository of packages, installed with its own package manager.

Package

The installable unit of one source: a .deb in Debian, an .rpm in Fedora, a Flatpak on Flathub. One app usually has many packages.

Package manager

The tool that installs packages from a repository and keeps them up to date: apt, dnf, pacman, zypper, flatpak, snap... or a graphical front-end such as GNOME Software or KDE Discover.

Repository

A server a package manager reads packages from. A vendor repository is one run by the software's own publisher (Google Chrome, VS Code, Brave...), added to your system on top of the distribution's.

AUR

The Arch User Repository: build recipes contributed by Arch users, built on your machine. Huge and useful, but not reviewed by Arch itself.

Rolling and stable releases

A rolling distribution (Arch, openSUSE Tumbleweed, Void) updates continuously, so apps are always recent. A stable (fixed-release) distribution (Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE Leap) freezes app versions for the life of a release and ships mostly security fixes, so apps can be older but change less.

Formats

Flatpak, Snap, AppImage

Universal formats that work across distributions. See which format to choose.

Sandbox

Isolation between an app and the rest of your system: the app only sees the files and devices it was granted. Flatpak and Snap apps run sandboxed, with permissions their packager declares; distro packages and AppImages normally don't.

A Flatpak's page shows what its sandbox is open to, in three levels:

  • Limited access: nothing beyond the basics (display, internet, audio).
  • Some access: it can reach part of your data or devices, such as your Downloads folder, a camera or a game controller.
  • Wide access: a large part of the sandbox is open, such as your whole home folder or the ability to run programs outside the sandbox. File managers, backup tools and developer tools need this to do their job.

These levels describe how much an app can reach, not what it does: a web browser rightly holds access to your devices, and none of this means an app is unsafe. Plumbing every app has (graphics acceleration, its own settings folders) isn't listed. When a package doesn't declare its permissions, the page shows nothing rather than a guess.

Runtime

A shared set of libraries Flatpak apps are built against (GNOME, KDE or freedesktop runtimes). Installed once and shared between apps, which is why the first Flatpak you install is a larger download.