Packaging for Ubuntu

The process of packaging your application for Ubuntu doesn't differ much from that of macOS. Let's get started:

1. You need to provide an application identifier and a category in the linux section of the package.json file:

      {
         "build": {
          "appId": "com.my.app.id",
          "linux": {
            "category": "Utility"
          }
        }
      }

1. Update your package.json file and append the following scripts to it so that you can build your application in development mode and distribution mode:

      {
         "scripts": {
          "start": "electron .",
          "build:linux": "electron-builder --linux --dir",
          "dist:linux": "electron-builder --linux"
        }
      }

1. Let's ensure that we can build the application for local testing. Run the first script in the Terminal window:

      npm run build:linux

1. In the project's root, you should see the dist/linux-unpacked folder, which contains several build artifacts:

1. Now, let's see what you get when you're building packages for distribution. Run the second command, as shown in the following code:

      npm run dist:linux

1. This time, you are going to get multiple packages in the dist folder, as shown in the following screenshot:

The files that will be in your output folder are as follows:

• my-first-app 1.0.0.AppImage: The AppImage format is a universal software packaging format for all GNU/Linux distros.
• my-first-app_1.0.0_amd64.snap: This is a snap file, another popular format for sandboxed applications.
• linux-unpacked/my-first-app: This is the unpacked build for local testing and custom distributions.

1. For now, double-click on my-first-app 1.0.0.AppImage to run the app. If you get the Would you like to integrate my-first-app with your system dialog, click No.
2. This will be your final output:

Congratulations—you've got your first cross-platform Electron application package up and running on Ubuntu Linux!