How to easily find Snaps and Flatpaks on Linux with Chob

Are you tired of having to search through the Snap store, the Flatpak store, and the AppImage feed to find the app you want on your Linux desktop? Wishing it was easier to search all three at once? If so, check out Chob! It’s a nifty little tool that can search AppImage, Flatpak, and Snap for the app you want all in one go!

In this guide, we’ll go over how to install Chob on Linux. Also, we’ll go over how to use it to make finding software from Flatpak, AppImage, and Snap much easier.

Install Chob on Linux

There are many ways to install the Chob app on Linux. Currently, the developer has a Deb package, a generic pre-built Linux binary, and source code. In this section, we’ll go over all the different ways of installing the program on Linux.

To start the installation of Chob on Linux, open up a terminal window by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T or Ctrl + Shift + T on the keyboard. From there, follow the command-line instructions below that correspond with the Linux distribution you currently use.

Ubuntu

On Ubuntu Linux, Chob is perhaps the easiest to install, as there’s no need to mess with the generic binary or the source code. Instead, download the DEB package and install it.

To grab the Chob DEB package on your Ubuntu PC, use the following wget command in a terminal window.

wget https://github.com/MuhammedKpln/chob/releases/download/0.3.5/chob.deb

After downloading the Chob DEB package to your Ubuntu PC, you must call in the dpkg command to install the package to the system.

sudo dpkg -i chob.deb

Following the installation, you may run into errors in the terminal prompt. To fix these errors, follow our guide on Ubuntu dependency errors.

Debian

As the developer of the Chob app has a DEB package available for download, getting it working on Debian is very easy. To start the installation, use the wget command to download the package.

wget https://github.com/MuhammedKpln/chob/releases/download/0.3.5/chob.deb

Once the file is done downloading to your Debian Linux PC, use the dpkg command to load up the package on the system.

sudo dpkg -i chob.deb

Following the installation of Chob on Debian, you may experience errors in the terminal prompt. To fix these errors, please follow our guide on correcting Debian dependency issues.

Generic Linux binary

If you’re not using Ubuntu or Debian, the only way to get Chob working without much fussing around is with the generic binary. Luckily, it isn’t complicated, as the binary is a single file that needs to be placed in /usr/bin/.

To get your hands on the latest binary release of Chob on Linux, use the following wget command below.

wget https://github.com/MuhammedKpln/chob/releases/download/0.3.5/chob-linux

After downloading the binary, you will need to rename it from “chob-linux” to “chob.” To do this, use the following mv command.

mv chob-linux chob

Once the file is renamed, install the generic Linux binary into /usr/bin/ with the mv command.

sudo mv chob /usr/bin/

Finally, make Chob usable on your Linux PC by updating the permissions via chmod.

sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/chob

Building from source

While the generic Linux binary should do the trick for most Linux users, a particular segment of the community prefers to compile their software from the source code.

To start the source code compilation, you must install NPM, Git, and Yarn. Open up a terminal window by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T or Ctrl + Shift + T and follow the command-line installation instructions that correspond with your distribution.

Ubuntu

sudo apt install git npm
sudo npm install -g yarn

Debian

sudo apt install git npm

sudo npm install -g yarn

Arch Linux

sudo pacman -S git npm yarn

Fedora

sudo dnf install npm git

sudo npm install -g yarn

OpenSUSE

sudo zypper install git npm10

sudo npm install -g yarn

Generic Linux

To build Chob on Linux, you must install NPM and Git. From there, install Yarn via NPM with the command below.

sudo npm install -g yarn

Following the installation of NPM, Git, and Yarn on your Linux PC, it’s time to start the compilation. Using the git clone command, grab the latest Chob source code.

git clone https://github.com/MuhammedKpln/chob.git

Once you’ve got the Chob source code, build the software.

cd chob
npm install && yarn

How to use Chob

Using Chob is very easy. To access it, open up a terminal window by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T or Ctrl + Shift + T, and executing the chob –help command.

chob --help

To use chob to find a program in the Snap Store, Flatpak Flathub store, or as an AppImage, follow the step-by-step instructions below.

Step 1: Execute the chob command alongside a search query. For example, to find the Chromium browser, you’d do:

chob "chromium"

Step 2: Look through the list of search results in the terminal. Then, select a number on the keyboard to instantly load up the page on Snap, AppImage, etc.