Solved “AppImages require FUSE to run” error on Ubuntu

In this article we will see how to solve "AppImages require FUSE to run" error on ubuntu based systems. It is quite possible that whenever you are trying to install a software using AppImage then you may encounter this error. I have also encountered this error when I tried installing elasticvue desktop application using AppImage on my Ubuntu 22.04 LTS system. This error can occur due to few reasons but in case you are also facing this issue then I would recommend you to go through below article and follow the steps to solve this problem on Ubuntu based Linux Systems.

What is AppImage

An AppImage is basically a type of package format that includes all the libraries and dependencies required to run a software. It allows us to run and use software in our linux based systems without having the need to install them which means we can run AppImage file from almost anywhere, be it is from USB drive or from an external drive. This saves lot of user time and effort and it is super convenient to use.

Solved “AppImages require FUSE to run” error on Ubuntu

Also Read: Solved “CONFLICT (modify/delete): ‘file’ deleted in HEAD and modified” error

As I mentioned when I was trying to run an elasticvue AppImage installer on my Ubuntu 22.04 LTS system then i noticed below "AppImages require FUSE to run" error.

Ubuntu-Server@ubuntu:~$ ./elasticvue_1.0.10_amd64.AppImage
dlopen(): error loading libfuse.so.2

AppImages require FUSE to run.
You might still be able to extract the contents of this AppImage
if you run it with the --appimage-extract option.
See https://github.com/AppImage/AppImageKit/wiki/FUSE
for more information

Solution 1: Install libfuse2 package

Well, above error can occur due to multiple reasons but most of the time it is due to missing libfuse2 library in your system. So to solve above error, you have to install libfuse2 package in your system by using sudo apt install libfuse2 command as shown below.

Ubuntu-Server@ubuntu:~$ sudo apt install libfuse2
[sudo] password for Ubuntu-Server:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
libfuse2
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 50 not upgraded.
Need to get 90.3 kB of archives.
After this operation, 330 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jammy/universe amd64 libfuse2 amd64 2.9.9-5ubuntu3 [90.3 kB]
Fetched 90.3 kB in 1s (78.0 kB/s)
Selecting previously unselected package libfuse2:amd64.
(Reading database ... 239452 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../libfuse2_2.9.9-5ubuntu3_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking libfuse2:amd64 (2.9.9-5ubuntu3) ...
Setting up libfuse2:amd64 (2.9.9-5ubuntu3) ...
Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.35-0ubuntu3.8) ...

After successful installation, if you run AppImage again, you will notice below output. This confirms that AppImage file executed successfully and error "AppImages require FUSE to run" is solved now.

Solution 2: Check the installation path of libfuse2

It is possible that libfuse2 package is already installed in your system but to a different location and system currently does not have the visibility of that location. So what you need to do in this case is that you have to set the library path in  global environment variable PATH location and export it so that system can see the installation path. This can be done using below command:-

export PATH=$PATH:

But to let you know, above arrangement is just the temporary one. To make the changes permanent, you have to create an entry under either  ~/.bashrc or ~/.bash_profile file and then restart your system to reflect the updated changes.

Solution 3: Run AppImage without installing libfuse2 (alternate solution)

If you are not looking to install libfuse2 package in your system then there is an alternate solution as well where you can try running the AppImage with the --appimage-extract option. This way it will extract the contents of AppImage into a directory named squashfs-root.

Ubuntu-Server@ubuntu:~$ ./elasticvue_1.0.10_amd64.AppImage --appimage-extract
squashfs-root/.DirIcon
squashfs-root/AppRun
squashfs-root/AppRun.wrapped
squashfs-root/apprun-hooks
squashfs-root/apprun-hooks/linuxdeploy-plugin-gtk.sh
squashfs-root/elasticvue.desktop
squashfs-root/elasticvue.png
squashfs-root/usr
squashfs-root/usr/bin
squashfs-root/usr/bin/elasticvue
squashfs-root/usr/lib
squashfs-root/usr/lib/im-am-et.so
squashfs-root/usr/lib/im-broadway.so
squashfs-root/usr/lib/im-cedilla.so
......................................

Then you can switch to squashfs-root directory using cd squashfs-root command as shown below.

Ubuntu-Server@ubuntu:~$ cd squashfs-root
Ubuntu-Server@ubuntu:~/squashfs-root$

Finally run ./AppRun and notice below output. This confirms AppImage file can run without installing libfuse2 package. So you can also explore this alternate approach as well.

Hope above article gave you enough insights about the error encountered and how to tackle this issue. Please do let me know your feedback in the comment box.