Portable Linux Apps: Not Always an Easy Schlep

"Portable Linux applications are versions of familiar apps like GIMP and OpenOffice that can reside on a USB drive and be carried around from computer to computer with the user's settings and preferences intact. There are several places to find a variety of portable apps, but sometimes getting them to work correctly is more hassle than it's worth.

"One of the best productivity tools I had when I used Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Windows was a collection of portable applications. I missed those tools when I migrated to Linux. Now several open source projects could make portable apps available to mainstream Linux users.

"Three websites are trying to create that functionality. But the efforts might need more work before they all perform well out of the box. I found that being able to get these portable apps to run is largely hit and miss. Sadly, my testing showed that it is mostly miss."

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