We fix this issue by distributing ours in a tar file with the executable bit set. Linux novices can just double click on the tar to exact it and double click again on the actual appimage.

Been doing it this way for years now, so it's well battle tested.

That kind of defeats the point of an AppImage though - you could just as well have a tar archive with a c classic collection of binaries + optional launcher script.

A single file is much better to manage on the eyes than a whole bunch of them, plus AppImages can be installed into the desktop using integration.