Grok Bot for Linux (unofficial)

xAI ships Grok Bot for Windows and macOS only. This repository builds a wine-less Linux package (AppImage, tarball, optional .deb).

It is a packaging project, not an official xAI or Cursor product. Grok Bot itself remains proprietary.

Download: Releases

Current packaged version: 0.30.0. String audit of the AppImage (including the words “spock” and “aurora”): docs/string-audit.md.

To rebuild it yourself, paste BUILD-PROMPT.md into a new Grok Build session (or run ./scripts/port.sh <version> from this repo).

Warning: the AppImage always launches Chromium with --no-sandbox. That flag is built into AppRun; you do not pass it, and you cannot turn it off by omitting it. Renderer processes then run with your user privileges. Use the tarball with a setuid chrome-sandbox if you want the sandbox.

This build is x86_64 (64-bit Intel/AMD) and needs glibc 2.38 or newer.

Should work on: Ubuntu 24.04 / 25.04 / 26.04, Linux Mint 22, Pop!_OS 24.04, Fedora 40+, Arch Linux, Debian 13, openSUSE Tumbleweed, and other current glibc desktop distros.

Will not work on: Ubuntu 22.04, Debian 12, RHEL/Rocky/Alma 9, Alpine (musl), or ARM (Raspberry Pi, Apple Silicon VMs, aarch64).

Install

AppImage (easiest)

Make it executable, then run it:

chmod +x Grok_Bot_*.AppImage
./Grok_Bot_*.AppImage

Or in the file manager: right-click the AppImage → Properties → Permissions → turn on Executable as Program.

Needs FUSE (/dev/fuse). If FUSE is missing:

chmod +x Grok_Bot_*.AppImage
./Grok_Bot_*.AppImage --appimage-extract
./squashfs-root/AppRun

If another Grok Bot is already running, quit it first. Every build uses the same Electron app id (sand) and will otherwise just focus the old window.

Tarball (sandbox-capable)

The AppImage cannot ship a setuid chrome-sandbox. Use the tarball if you want the Chromium sandbox:

tar -xzf Grok_Bot_0.30.0_linux_x64.tar.gz
cd Grok_Bot_0.30.0_linux_x64
sudo chown root:root chrome-sandbox && sudo chmod 4755 chrome-sandbox
./grok-bot

Without the setuid sandbox:

./grok-bot --no-sandbox

Debian package (optional)

sudo dpkg -i grok-bot_0.30.0_amd64.deb

How it works

The Windows installer is an NSIS archive. Inside it is app-64.7z, which holds a normal Electron application tree.

From the Windows build	On Linux
resources/app.asar (JavaScript)	Copied unchanged
resources/app.asar.unpacked/**/*.js	Copied unchanged
Grok Bot.exe, *.dll	Not used — replaced by official Electron linux-x64
*.node native addons	Cannot be reused — they are Windows PE (MZ) binaries. dlopen on Linux only loads ELF. Rebuilt or swapped for Linux prebuilds.

So the “app core” (the asar) is used without change. The Windows executable and native addons are not portable; those are the only pieces we replace.

Native addons in 0.30.0 (from the Windows runtime-deps-manifest.json):

• cursor-proclist — Linux /proc implementation (Windows tree ships the JS wrapper, not the .cc files)
• tree-sitter, tree-sitter-bash — npm linux-x64 prebuilds
• web-tree-sitter — WASM, copied unchanged

0.24.0 also shipped better-sqlite3, whichlang-node, and @anysphere/tree-chunk-napi. Those modules are gone from the 0.29+ payload, so they are not rebuilt. Hardware WebAuthn uses a Windows-only sand-webauthn-signer.exe; Linux looks for sand-webauthn-signer and will skip that helper if it is missing.

Build locally

Needs Node.js 22+, curl, unzip, g++, make, python3, and either 7z/p7zip-full or network access (the script will fetch a standalone 7-Zip). AppImage output also needs squashfs-tools and appimagetool.

./scripts/detect-version.sh          # HEAD-probe for a newer installer
./scripts/port.sh 0.30.0             # local originals/ or download, fuse, rebuild, package

Artifacts land in dist/:

• Grok_Bot_<ver>_linux_x64.tar.gz
• Grok_Bot_<ver>_x86_64.AppImage (when AppImage tooling is present)
• grok-bot_<ver>_amd64.deb (when dpkg-deb is present)

Override Electron with --electron-version / --electron-abi. Downloads are cached in .cache/.

Rebuild with Grok Build

Paste the full prompt in BUILD-PROMPT.md into a new Grok Build session. If originals/Grok_Bot_<ver>_Setup.exe is present, port.sh uses that file instead of downloading.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Fix
7z: command not found	Install p7zip-full, or let port.sh download 7zz into .cache/tools.
chrome-sandbox: Operation not permitted	sudo chown root:root chrome-sandbox && sudo chmod 4755 chrome-sandbox, or pass --no-sandbox.
invalid ELF header / crash on .node	A Windows PE addon slipped through. Rebuild with ./scripts/port.sh <ver> and do not set GROKBOT_ALLOW_BROKEN_NATIVE=1.
node-gyp fails on cursor-proclist	Need g++, make, and Python 3.12 (conda/pyenv Pythons 3.13+ can break node-gyp).
AppImage not produced	Install squashfs-tools and appimagetool. The tarball still builds.
Security-key / WebAuthn helper missing	Windows ships sand-webauthn-signer.exe. Linux looks for sand-webauthn-signer and will not find it. Password / browser login still works.

Issues

Issues are welcome. Pull requests are not accepted. GitHub always lets people open a PR against a public repo; those PRs are closed automatically. Please use Issues for bugs, questions, and distro reports.

License

Scripts in this repository are available for reuse as packaging glue.

Grok Bot, its asar payload, and trademarks belong to xAI / Cursor. Do not commit installer binaries or app.asar into this repo — they are downloaded at build time.