Install and use Moonpool on Linux

Moonpool runs on Linux through WebKitGTK. It is developed mainly on Windows, so Linux is supported but less battle-tested. There is no install card or portable-mode chooser on Linux, and the “…” menu has no Install Moonpool… item.

Install

Download a package from the project’s Releases page.

Package	Updates
AppImage	Moonpool updates itself
`.deb`	Your package manager
RPM (install with your distribution’s RPM tool)	Your package manager

chmod +x Moonpool_*.AppImage
./Moonpool_*.AppImage

sudo apt install ./Moonpool_*_amd64.deb

sudo dnf install ./Moonpool-*.x86_64.rpm

The .deb pulls in its runtime dependencies. The AppImage needs the WebKitGTK and AppIndicator libraries present, for example on Debian or Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install -y libwebkit2gtk-4.1-0 libayatana-appindicator3-1

On Fedora or Arch use the equivalents:

sudo dnf install webkit2gtk4.1 libayatana-appindicator-gtk3

sudo pacman -S webkit2gtk-4.1 libayatana-appindicator

Tray on GNOME

Stock GNOME does not show tray icons, so Moonpool’s tray icon will not appear until the AppIndicator extension is installed and enabled:

sudo apt-get install -y gnome-shell-extension-appindicator
gnome-extensions enable [email protected]

Then log out and in. The hub window and embedded terminals work without it. KDE, Cinnamon, XFCE and MATE show the tray out of the box.

Updates

Only the AppImage self-updates. It reads linux-update.json from GitHub Releases, verifies the minisign signature, and replaces the AppImage file in place, so keep it in a folder you can write to. .deb and RPM installs are never overwritten by Moonpool: the update check can still report a newer version, but installing it from Moonpool fails with a message to use your package manager. See Updating.

Config location

~/.config/Moonpool/              (or $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/Moonpool/)
~/.config/Moonpool/apps.json
~/.config/Moonpool/dashboards/examples/   (example dashboards)

apps.json is seeded from the example on first run. See Configuration overview.

Differences from Windows

Launch commands run through $SHELL -c <command> (/bin/sh if SHELL is unset), so use syntax your shell understands.
Stop kills the process group, then does the extra cleanup chosen by killMode. Freeing a port under killMode: "port" uses lsof, falling back to fuser; install lsof if your distribution does not ship it. See Stop and restart.
A desktop app’s processName must be 15 characters or fewer. Linux truncates a process name to 15 characters, so a longer name is never detected as running and cannot be stopped by name. web apps match on their port and are unaffected.
Icons are found from an app’s src-tauri/icons/, public/favicon.*, icon.png or its live favicon. Extracting an icon from a binary is Windows-only.
Reveal buttons open the containing folder rather than selecting the file.
Config files open in your default text editor (resolved from the text/plain association).
The Windows installer, shortcuts and Add/Remove entry do not apply.