FLATPAK EXPLAINED: Theming, permissions, command line, browser installs...

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#Flatpak #Linux #software
00:00 Intro
00:33 Sponsor: Regain control of your network connection
01:31 Flatpak explained
03:30 Installing and setting up Flatpak
04:57 Theming Flatpak applications
08:41 Managing Permissions
10:43 Installing from the browser
11:21 Command Line basics
13:54 Sponsor: Get a PC that was made to run Linux
14:52 Support the channel
Flatpak is a method of packaging applications for ALL linux distros with one single package.
Flatpaks mostly don't use your shared libraries, they ship their own.
Flatpak also brings better security with a sandbox that doesn't let the app access all your system when it doesn't need to, and a permissions system.
Flatpak also uses repositories, called remotes, the biggest one is of course Flathub.
So, most distros out there should have flatpak preinstalled, but if you run Ubuntu or an official Ubuntu flavor, Debian, or Arch, you might want to install it yourself.
On Ubuntu or Debian:
sudo apt install flatpak
For any distro:
flathub.org/setup
But this only gives you command line access to flatpak. If you're a more graphical sort of person, you might want to add support for your app store:
FOr GNOME software, the package is often called gnome-software-plugin-flatpak, and for Discover on KDE, it's generally plasma-discover-flatpak.
Next, you'll need to add a repo to be able to install flatpaks easily, without downloading a file manually each time. The biggest one everyone should use is FLathub, it has virtually every flatpak ever made.
sudo flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub flathub.org/repo/flathub.flat...
THEMING:
There are a bunch of themes available on Flathub, that you can find typing
flatpak search theme
If the theme you use is in there, you can just install it from here, then, you select it in GNOME Tweaks, and you run:
flatpak update
If your theme isn't available from Flathub, though, you'll need to tell flatpak it needs to use your specific theme. To do this, you can either run a command, or use a graphical application.
sudo flatpak override --env=GTK_THEME=NAME OF YOUR THEME.
But that's not enough, we also need to give flatpak access to the directory where your themes are located, namely the .themes directory:
sudo flatpak override --filesystem=$HOME/.themes
For GTK4/Libadwaita apps, open your .bash-profile file in your home directory. At the end, add this line:
export GTK_THEME=NAMEOFYOURTHEME
Save the file, and then log out and log back in for all the changes we made to be applied. All your GTK apps should now use the right theme, whether they're using libadwaita, flatpak, or both.
PERMISSIONS
Now let's see how you can change permissions. To manage them, you can use Flatseal on GNOME and KDE, but KDE also has a permissions page in the settings.
Generally, permissions are correctly set, but if you feel an app shouldn't have access to something, you can toggle that thing off, and if you feel an app SHOULD have access to something, you can toggle it ON.
BROWSER INSTALL
Installing flatpaks is just a one click operation from your graphical app store, but if you like to browse for apps in your web browser, you can also start an install straight from there.
There's an extension for Firefox and CHromium based browsers called Flatline.
addons.mozilla.org/en-US/fire...
chrome.google.com/webstore/de...
COMMAND LINE BASICS:
install: flatpak install APPNAME
Uninstall: flatpak remove APPNAME
Update: flatpak update
Cleanup: flatpak uninstall --unused
List installed flatpaks: flatpak list
Search for flatpaks: flatpak search
Run an app: flatpak run COMPLETE_APPNAME
Kill an app: flatpak kill COMPLETE_APPNAME
Repair: flatpak repair

[@TheLinuxEXP]

NOTE: I was told of another method to handle theming using flatseal, that should be less prone to breakage in apps: instead of adding the GTK_THEME override in .bash-profile, and giving flatpak access to the .themes folder, you can add the 2 following overrides for all apps in flatseal in the "other files" section: xdg-config/gtk-4.0:ro xdg-config/gtk-3.0:ro This will let flatpak read the current theme in your config, and change it for all flatpak apps. Should be more resilient if things change in GNOME, and shouldn't break too much stuff. As awlays, though, theming is a "hack" so it's never 100% perfect. Oh, and also, if you want to secure and monitor your internet connection, you can download Safing's Portmaster and take control of your network traffic: safing.io

[@andrive]

Nice

[@user-hg6jk1ny7b]

Yeah I was playing with vanillaOS and found it hilarious that the flatseal icon is a roll of scotch tape 😂 so accurate! I need to take baby steps with the container OS'es there is definitely a very steep learning cliff I mean curve

[@monabuu]

I love the permissions popup idea! When I installed Bottles I had no idea that it only had access to ~/Downloads by default so when I downloaded an app, ran it to test if it works, then moved it to an apps folder, I was very surprised to see a WINE error message. No warning from Bottles or Flatpak that somethign was wrong. I spent a good half hour troubleshooting before I thought of checking the permissions in Flatseal - something that came to mind only because YOU mentioned Flatseal in a previous video. Had I not watched it, I would have no idea what was going on or how to fix it!

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Yeah they really should implement that

[@_framedlife]

multiple people pointed out that permissions should've been realtime from the get go but the committee working on it refused by never even really acknowledging the question. it's one of my biggest gripes about flatpak. I hate having to launch flatseal to change/fix permissions. it's better now though but the solution has been to do more broader permissions from the get go. that said, managing flatpak is much better than snaps, appimages and even system packages at times.

[@ManiVictorious]

Unfortunately, I do not think that is so easy to implement from a programmers perspective. A much easier and cleaner way to achieve this is via the use of flatpak portals (maybe a drag and drop portal in this specific case). This does require the app developers to update their apps to use the new APIs though. Something I think is a reasonable thing to ask for new and actively maintained applications but less likely to happen for legacy ones

[@marcboocha]

Yep, this is a portal thing.

[@razzeeee]

Pretty sure your actually describing a portal here

[@MrMysticphantom]

I came here for flatearth

[@Nan0MK_Old]

Obviously the earth is a square!

[@JayMannStuff]

​​@@Nan0MK_Olda square in space. Which segways into this comment's sponsor. 😂

[@user-hg6jk1ny7b]

😂100

[@robinweiland7533]

It's a potato

[@st0rmrider]

I thought you were flat packer

[@crism8868]

On the theming part, it's worth noting Linux Mint takes care of all of it, just pick the theme you like as you usually do, and the Mint Update manager will download said theme as a flatpack and apply it to all your installed flatpacks

[@TheLinuxEXP]

That’s really nice!

[@Blueeeeeee]

This is default behavior from Flatpak, it works on all distros

[@6XGate]

It seems GNOME Software is also smart enough to install your active theme when you install software. Wished the CLI version or Pamac would do that too.

[@KCKingcollin]

Mint is my single favorite recommendation for new users for that single reason

[@KCKingcollin]

​@@6XGateI think you mean Ubuntu, Fedora gnome does not do that as well I'm afraid

[@tchx84]

Hey Nick, great video! I would recommend reading about portals, which is pretty much what you described as per managing permissions dynamically.

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Portals are great, yeah!

[@KrishnaDraws]

Great explanation. I think that Linux really needs to make the Flatpak experience much easier than it currently is.

[@mirage809]

Flatpak has great potential for both developers and users. And mostly this has been realized. It's just nice that you can rely on one solution that will work regardless of distro. The permission situation is a bit lacking still. Your solution is how Android does things and it works beautifully there. If an app wants to use your camera or microphone it'll request it with a popup. The only thing I wish Flatpak did is cleaning up runtimes when they're no longer needed. When you remove a program Flatpak will leave all the runtimes behind. If I choose to uninstall an app and it's the only thing using that runtime then Flatpak should just get rid of that runtime too. Or alternatively: ask real quick if I wanna leave the runtime or remove it. Would save a little space.

[@softwarelivre2389]

flatpak remove --unused

[@vitchuu]

@@softwarelivre2389 That'll work, sure, but is not intuitive for the every day user and should be done automatically anyway

[@MichaelMantion]

I've seen a lot of flatpaks that don't work, or are much slower than native apps.

[@vitchuu]

@@MichaelMantion That's unfortunate, personally though for me it's been great! Pretty much every time I had an issue with something, the solution ended up being "Just use Flatpak" I use an immutable system now because of it, I only have solaar and ckb-next installed with traditional packaging (by layering them) because they're not available as Flatpak

[@atemoc]

@@softwarelivre2389 That action should be automatically run after each Flatpak update and uninstall, with a prompt asking the user if they want to clean these unused Flatpaks or not. It's a silly oversight in my opinion, and a costly one on storage space (the first time I discovered and ran this command, it freed up almost 50Go of space on my disk...)

[@Xander_92]

I wish flatpak had support for parallel downloads, it would be much faster to install and update lots of packages at once.

[@wonderfullife5665]

For me appimage is the best package format. Just 1 thing to download and use it from a USB you can want to move it from debian to arch you can flatpak/snap is just to complicated. Only thing appimage does lack is theming and update option. And it will be instantly better than flatpak or snap

[@wilmergaleano7465]

No

[@vishalkumar040393]

Flatpak has so many issues. My TexMaths extension doesn't work on LibreOffice Flatpak. SImilarly, KiCAD Flatpak doesn't recognize the system Text editor in the preferences. Same is true for Inkscape Flatpak Latex extension. And I m afraid to uninstall LibreOffice as my work has lot of references, that might go bad. If Anyone is having a solution to these issues, please help?

[@TheLinuxEXP]

I know the LO devs are working on fixing access to extensions, but I’m not sure there is solution yet! Maybe giving the app access to the directory where the extension is usually installed?

[@etsw]

There is also "flatpak remote-ls --updates" command to check what updates your system is waiting. I wish you would add this as well :) but great video overall, thank you!

[@shatterstone3045]

If the flatpak devs implemented your suggestions (I'm not sure how the permissions popup will work, but the CLI part about program names over IDs is a must) I would consider switching to flatpak for all desktop applications possible.

[@mks-h]

Flatpak isn't targeted for CLI apps, so why would you consider using it for them? It's primarily for GUI apps, and it already has all kinds of permissions popups, including file chooser drag-and-drop.

[@moussagacem8260]

I agree for the pop up permission like android or ios do. For me the fact that it's me who should disable some permissions is weird and the proof that developers should be more aware, the developer shouldn't just force his flatpak to access everything and I have to disable the various permissions and see if the application will work or not and what settings should be enable to make the app works...etc. For me the mentality of just "there isn't any virus on linux so let's use X11 even when it's not secure and we don't have to enforce sandboxing" is false.

[@razzeeee]

The fact that some will want to disable some permissions stems from the fact, that we're all different and static permissions are just an in between before there are enough portals. Permissions on flathub are vetted, but some even want all apps to don't have network access by default. It's a compromise between usability and security.

[@moussagacem8260]

@@razzeeee I understand that and I don't want to remove the possibility of editing permissions. But for me and for most normal user I think, they just want the sandboxing to have a secure system, and so it's better for us that the developers choose themselves the permissions needed to have a working application but that doesn't have access to everything. Or they can enable some permission to have a working application but disable some because they are uses in some option and if you want those options a pop up will tell you if you want to allow this access or not.

[@razzeeee]

@@moussagacem8260 I think you need to be more specific and call out apps, that don't have a minimal set of permissions in your opinion. Best would be to then open an issue on their flathub repo. Flatpak shows you that exact pop up, for webcam access and file access, if your app is up to date enough.

[@Beryesa.]

Btw, .local/share/themes should be preferred to .themes And you could use xdg-documents instead of the whole path :)

[@fuseteam]

I wish flatpaks used more xdg paths .local/bin .local/lib .local/share/applications .config .cache And friends xd

[@slizgi86]

Thanks Nick for the Flatpak themes tutorial! Hope someday all this theme stuff will get an automated running script or something in any distro to just apply/copy/whatever is needed to set a theme to Flatpak apps. And shorter name for Flatpak run and kill in the future is a must-have, it is odd that it require full name, but install works.

[@blacktick6171]

Vary helpful tutorial. Thank you.

[@FredPilcher]

Thanks Nick - very good!

[@13thravenpurple94]

Great video Thank you 👍💜

[@Battler624]

I do hope that they fix the flatpak issue of drag and drop (like you mentioned, give permission per file)

[@robertszynal4745]

I like to just wrap everything in containers and just map in exactly what I want them to know/have access to. Completely distro agnostic. Thanks to Jessie Frazzelle, the docker queen, for detailing how to do it all on her blog.

[@callyral]

Just what I needed!!

[@joaomendes1574]

Great video as usual. I even liked the ad :)

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Thanks!

[@jameswise9171]

Excellent timing given I'm about to try using flatpak for sandboxing

[@MichaelMantion]

Its best to just avoid flatpak and the like.

[@amigaworkbench720]

what i like about flatpak is that you can: * disable internet access * set firewall rules to app * install multiple app versions

[@prometeusz1984]

Thanx I didn't know about flatpak repair. Usefull to delete unused runetime

[@ThatLinuxDude]

10:36 Either the ability to drag and drop files into Flatpaks, via a 'drag and drop' Portal, is in the works or already exists but Discord doesn't use it yet.

[@TheLinuxEXP]

It already exists, yeah, but not all apps use it

[@pialdas6835]

Discord isn't even updated to use Pipewire (at least, last time I checked) which forced me to use WebCord since Discord's screensharing was broken.

[@justpatrick_]

Every time I try to save a file using the brave or vscode flatpak or any other flatpak it opens some wierd '/run/user/1000/doc/.... directory. How can I fix this

[@barrelrole]

its under the downloads settings

[@JimmySolution]

My issue with Bottles is that, although it does have internet connection or access turned on for apps, the bottle-containers still say there don't have access to internet. This is happening when I\m trying to install any kind of windows software inside of them. That's something which I do not understand. Any ideas?

[@lostipod]

Thanks!

[@noopss4839]

Excellent video, explanations are clear. :) What is the name of the icon theme you use at 2:15 ?

[@Linux_ASMR]

This is a great video on Flatpak Nick. The way theming works on flatpak is convoluted like you said. The guide you provide in your video really helps to correct that, thanks! Hopefully flatpak will make it easier to follow the theme used by the system in the future.

[@Kermit2k]

So debian and archlinux aren't one of the "good ones" distributions because they don't come with Flatpak and Flathub pre-installed? Debian/ArchLinux masterrace!

[@johntera4958]

if I already have installed clang diagnostic from apt repo, any programs that I installed through flatpak that requires clang diagnostic will not not find/work. for example emacs or vscode. but if I install from snap everything working fine with no issue...

[@anonymouscommentator]

does anyone know how many flatpaks exist? it would be nice to compare the flathub repo size to other repos.

[@pavlokrak]

Nick, instances - I want to be able to run several instances of a selected application, e.g. one instance of browser for work and one for private stuff.

[@sun3alex]

As always writing a comment to support the channel

[@danoblue]

Very clear explanations, especially for someone who is relatively new to Flatpak, like myself. Thanks, Nick.

[@dktol56]

So if I install all my flatpaks as a user (in my home directory) and later reinstall the OS (or an other distro with flatpak support), can I use flatpak repair to restore the local installation without having to download all of the flatpaks again?

[@Skyman12808]

Hey Mr Nick Can I Use Ubuntu flavours Without Snaps and Only Flatpaks Like I Want To use Kubuntu Xubuntu And Lubuntu

[@schnow265]

If only I could use libdvdcss in the Faltpak version of VLC

[@janjansen6263]

Does anyone know of it is possible to use a separate partition for the flatpak runtime and use them between distros (dual boot)

[@Blueeeeeee]

Yes, I've done that without issues. You'll want to put /var/lib/flatpak and ~/.var/app in a dedicated partition, and you're good to go - flatpak apps and user data will be shared between your distributions !

[@janjansen6263]

Thanks, I will give it a try

[@bobdinitto]

Flatpack looks great compared to what we've had in the past. It solves a lot of problems with installing shared libraries that have plagued Linux for a long time. And it eases the developer's burden of creating distro-specific images. It does however look a little rough around the edges for installing themes. That will obviously need a lot more work to make it user friendly. And Flatpack doesn't address installing non-GUI apps, does it? I'd be interested in seeing a video about that problem and if there are any potential solutions on the horizon apart from snaps, which I believe supports it.

[@snowmean1]

Unfortunately Flatpak still suffers from inter-flatpak apps communication. Inability to use Flatpak KeepassXC together with Flatpak Firefox is a great example of that, and this is a bigger problem that it seems which must be addressed on the Flatpak implementation level. CLI apps on the other hand don't really need Flatpak, and was never within Flatpak scope, Nix-packages can address CLI apps, but honestly CLI apps are usually low-level applications which comes with the base system, so there are not much benefit of packing them into something fancy. I guess in future linux will split between base system where low-level system lives together with DE, and GUI apps distributed as Flatpaks - that would have make more sense than trying to package the entire system into Flatpaks.

[@shariarrahman7562]

Good stuff

[@mks-h]

10:15 - That kind of exists... Apps open the file chooser popup (included with your system) in which you can choose any file you want to give to the app. Works for drag-and-drop, too. The way you phrased all that, sounds as if there is no way to do that. A special popup for apps that don't support Flatpak & portals could be a fine bonus, but I doubt it would actually be all that commonly usable.

[@chinmayghule8272]

I don't use Flatpak because there's a large difference between the sizes of applications. For example, VS Code's rpm would have a size of 25-50mb whereas it's flatpak equivalent would be 200-300mb. Yes, it could be because I have never downloaded any flatpak apps before and there's no common packages to share, but I'm on a daily data limit so I can't spend it downloading a single application. Plus I surely wouldn't bother doing all this stuff just to get the theming right, something which is a very basic thing an application is supposed to do.

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Apps aren’t supposed to be themed, it’s a hack and always has been ;)

[@kidgoku1984]

That's the best mentality to have, use what tool works best for the job. Personally I use flatpaks because they do the job reliably across distros but I can see why someone would avoid it.

[@razzeeee]

Well, if you try to get the vscode theme fixed like this, I have bad news for you

[@mks-h]

@@TheLinuxEXP except for KDE, they actually support it as a feature.

[@Blueeeeeee]

One thing I love about Flatpak is I can have the entire installation on a dedicated partition that can be shared between several distributions and kept intact even if I reinstall my system.

[@PCDTECH]

Dans une de tes vidéos, tu expliques comment régler le problème des doubles icons qui s'ouvrent dans le dock lorsque qu'on ouvre une application flatpak. Je n'arrive pas à la retrouver.

[@TheJayman213]

What I wanna know is: When can I get Firefox Beta and/or Nightly Flatpaks 😭. I tried the Snap once but it didn't register my locally installed default font.

[@KCKingcollin]

I've been a die hard Linux user for years, but we NEEEEED a SINGLE app for all of what you did for themes, this is something we are WAY behind with compared to windows and mac, I know how complicated it might be, but it's worth it for everyone wanting to give Linux a try, this leaves just enough of a bad taste in the regular computer users mouth to not want to consider living with the rest of the trade offs of Linux, if I had the ability, I'd make that app rn

[@SirRFI]

In speak of themes: Is there Yaru Colors for GTK4? i am aware of Gradience, but last time I checked I didn't see theme like that. I wish accent colors were already a thing in GNOME.

[@TheLinuxEXP]

I wish they would add that too! I’ve seen some work towards that, maybe for GNOME 45 but I’d be surprised if it was ready

[@sereus86]

Great video, I have one question. Where find more flat stores then flathub?

[@vampzzz]

Does anyone have the link of the wallpaper at 3:36

[@midimax2998]

I wonder if a removed permission "survives" a package update or would it be (every time) reset to what the Application claims it needs?

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Normally it’s not reset

[@John223]

Shared linking libraries/packages was a mistake. The perfect application is self contained and does not break with a package update. Storage is not a bottleneck anymore to advocate for shared linking and statically linking everything at compile time prevents "packaging" applications for every other distribution. Flatpak runtimes are slowly becoming the NPM module folder, gotta have 5 versions of a runtime because every other application relies on a different one

[@wilmergaleano7465]

I think there is a need for tutorials or good blogs on the correct use of flatpak. An example, I was trying to implement using flatpak and I thought that google chrome was not working correctly. I understood after much research and especially when commenting on the problem that I needed to give permissions to access certain files and directories. Now I feel like Flatpak makes sense to me.

[@soulstenance]

I love Flatpaks as a supplement to existing distro repos but I never want to see them straight up replace them! They are big and bloated and because they're containerized they ship dependencies that you might already have installed (double edged sword). Also because of permissions issues, some types of apps may not have permission to do things they may need to do like access certain parts of the filesystem you may actually want to access. Another example is Dejadup which for the longest time didn't have permission to automate backups on Mint. This is partially the fault of Cinnamon not properly supporting portals but this still proves my point because not all desktops may properly support all aspects of Flatpak especially more obscure or less popular ones. Flatpak is awesome, I use it a lot but never let it replace base repos. 🥺🙏

[@JoelFeila]

i wonder if you could make it so flatpacks check what dependencies you already have and delete any copies it has.

[@MrBengezack]

Thanks Nick, is there a similar video for Bottles planned?

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Not yet, but if there is enough interest, sure!

[@barrelrole]

​@@TheLinuxEXPis there a major difference between bottles and proton?

[@ahmedthebest]

Can you do the same getting started but for arch Linux

[@pimmanders2261]

So if i run Wayland, can i install Steam thru flatpack? Because of the bottle thing? Bit of a noob here...🙃

[@enriquelnx]

Hey nick, Do you know how I can make Flatpak apps detect dark mode on my system?

[@TheLinuxEXP]

They automatically do if you have the dark version of your theme installed! If they don’t, then they don’t support the dark mode preference unfortunately

[@Dosenwerfer]

Thank you so much! This is a really really well made overview for how to use flatpak and tackle common issues. I am sure that this video will be the cause or at least accelerator of many improvements to flatpak, seeing that this video will be most people's starting point when they look for how to do certain things with flatpak.

[@Tvirus12]

My root / partition is 30 gigs and is routinely getting close to full. The flatpak folder is huge and removing old versions on the CLI doesn't do anything.

[@mks-h]

Make your root partition bigger (or don't separate /home at all). While 30GB might usually suffice for newly installed system, you will eventually grow out of it, Flatpak or not.

[@atemoc]

5:00 I am running NixOS with a standalone window manager, and I use about a dozen Flatpaks. However, I simply *cannot* get them to respect my theme. If I change nothing, some apps use dark mode and some use light mode, both of the Adwaita theme, and very inconsistently. My cursor theme (Bibata Modern Ice) is only right in Flatpaks such as Flatseal itself, and it is wrong in basically every other Flatpak I have installed. My GTK theme (let's not even talk about QT theming in Flatpak… (yes, there is Kvantum, but it's not a solution for me, it's not what I use not what I want to use with my normal system packages), is Flat Remix Blue Dark, it is installed on my system as a package and as a flatpak. Yet, not any of my Flatpak uses it. I tried to add "GTK_THEME=Flat-Remix-GTK-Blue-Darkest-Solid", but it didn't do anything, and as the theme is installed as a flatpak, I really have no idea why it doesn't work. Also, I can't find a way to make the fonts work properly either, but that's a minor inconvenience for me. --- Theming in Flatpak is still a hell after all these years.

[@JuxGD]

mister thelinuxexp i have a question does Flatpak include the needed libraries in every single package install, or does it save the libraries to somewhere all packages can access?

[@Blueeeeeee]

They're de-duplicated when several packages use the same version.

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Both. The main, major libraries are shared, but some individual libraries are packaged by the app itself and can be duplicated. It’s generally small stuff though

[@Blueeeeeee]

@@TheLinuxEXP Even libraries packaged by individual apps can be de-duplicated when it's the same version. Flatpak uses OSTree so identical files are de-duplicated across the entire installation.

[@JuxGD]

oh cool that's what i was worried about@@Blueeeeeee

[@JuxGD]

@@TheLinuxEXP thank you mister thelinuxexp you are very nice

[@AyushGupta-wn6zd]

That part about managing permissions was helpful to me. I use telegram and drag and drop features just don't work on it so i thought its a bug in the app. Today I learned that i had to just set permissions for it to access all folders😅

[@sergeya]

Whatever I do the flatpak version of telegram doesn’t want to use default gnome theme for mouse cursor. 😢

[@pandaman2651]

Thanks, Nick, for a great video! It explains a lot of things. I have one problem with Flatpaks that require access to tools "external" for a flatpak container for their functioning. One example is VS Code. I use it together with VSC-Prolog that needs a Prolog installation like SWI-Prolog. When I try to load a Prolog file, it complains "The terminal process failed to launch: Path to shell executable "/usr/bin/swipl" does not exist.", although I have installed Prolog. The same problem occurs with Texmaker. When I installed it via Flatpak, it also installed TeX Live SDK extension, so I can compile most Latex files. But when I try to use the minted package for code highlighting that relies on the Pygments Python package, it complains that it cannot find pygmentize, although it is installed. It would be great if you could make a video tutorial on solving such problems. I am sure that I am not the only one having such issues.

[@gyan277]

I never used flatpak bcuz i didn't understood it but now maybe I will give it a try

[@labonnelambda58]

You really don't need to know most things he said to use it. I use it since a long time and I didn't know most of it. Everything just worked out of the box except drag and drop files into discord (if it was not in the download folder) that I had to add access.

[@gyan277]

@@labonnelambda58 well i will give it a try..

[@bjornvildljung9448]

Great video! BTW the link to your Discord does not work.

[@TheLinuxEXP]

I’ll look into it!

[@paulstubbs7678]

So much for Flatpak being everywhere, I just booted up Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, no sign of Flatpak, it's all running via Snap. I did get Flatpak to install, and to load a test program, 'Brave browser'. It kind of confused me as instead of the 'Flat Hub' as mentioned, I saw another icon labelled 'Software' with a white briefcase icon alongside the orange briefcase 'A' icon software supplied as default by Ubuntu. The new one, that says 'Gnome software' in deals is kind of confusing as it does got line up with your video at all.

[@ukaszpalczewski7588]

Thx. Had no idea, that you can add permissions to faltpak. Not it makes sense! Ant the theming! I was wondering about that!

[@ilaripori6148]

The theming doesnt seem to work on gnome 45.

[@redhawk3385]

I wish appimages would have a central repo, im working on a coding app right now and realistically I need access to the host it's running on for opening a shell instance or just opening it from the command line, perfect use case for a appimage.

[@alpharigel5777]

I am getting "bash: flatpack: command not found" while using flatpack commands. Any help for that?

[@TheLinuxEXP]

it's "flatpak", not flatpack, there's no "c" :)

[@Blueeeeeee]

Would have been nice to touch on the de-duplication properties of Flatpak, as "Flatpak takes a huge amount of space" is a common criticism which, while still partially true, I think is blown way out of proportion.

[@Kiev-en-3-jours]

Exactly. Same for "Electron apps use too much memory". True, but not such a big deal compared to the huge advantages.

[@certainlynotthebestpianist5638]

Thanks for the quick tutorial for terminal usage - that's what is usually missing for me in your videos, as you're rather graphic-oriented (I'm not saying, it's bad, of course, it's just not my preferred way)

[@justinmoll7080]

Do you think you'll do any coverage of BlendOS? And maybe compare it with Vanilla OS and how they differ? Thanks for the great videos.

[@Blueeeeeee]

Side note, you don't need to manually install your theme, flatpak update will automatically install it for you.

[@ExistentialDawn]

How can you explain?

[@Blueeeeeee]

@@ExistentialDawn When you run "flatpak update" it will auto-detect your theme and install it if available

[@ExistentialDawn]

@@Blueeeeeee but that is just update, generally when you want new theme you have to write its name in terminal, right?

[@Revenant483]

Once they get native adaptive theming on Flatpack I will be all over it.

[@mks-h]

not going to happen so long as apps don't actually support theming. KDE might want to do it though.

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Yeah the issue is that there is no « general » theming API. Apps aren’t meant to be themed and it’s a hack that will never work completely reliably on every app, so I doubt they’ll spend much time on it. I included it because I knew people would ask, but I personally don’t do it

[@Revenant483]

@@TheLinuxEXP I agree! Lets hope someone takes up the task.

[@Revenant483]

@@mks-h That would be amazing! It would have to come from the distro.

[@JoelFeila]

ok I have to ask. Why is themeing so important?

[@ahmedthebest]

Great video like always I really loved it and I use it all the time. But what a free compare that with nix package manager

[@Freiheit-XXL]

How I can install Flatpak on Kubuntu? Thanks

[@RandomGeometryDashStuff]

how to install qt5-gtk2-platformtheme in flatpak to make qt apps use gtk2 theme?

[@4g0tten4]

Flatpak was taking too much space on my SSD so I cleaned it out of my Linux Mint installation.

[@robson4583]

I remeber when I installed a flatpak application and it downloaded Gnome 44 desktop with it. Then after some time I installed another package that installed...Gnome 43. I my opinion this is stupid. Why this second app can't just use Gnome 44 when it was already installed?

[@yeyintaung9837]

Plz more Linux related tutorials

[@michadybczak4862]

Wow! Flatseal is brilliant! I just enabled user and system d-bus for all flatpacks and libreoffice finally has global menus! However, menus in LO do not have the icons as they do when Libre is launched from repo, but nevertheless, this is an improvement. Didn't know it is possible. However, Portals section is grayed out. How to enable it? The tooltip shows that the portal data were not configured yet. Looking online for "configure portal on linux" doesn't show any relevant matches :(.

[@thingsiplay]

The issue I have with Flatpak is not the Flatpak technology itself, but the shift of responsibility towards developers. That means, i have to trust 50 developers of Flatpaks, instead of only my distribution. It also means that a single Flatpak can't be perfectly suited to all distributions and need configuration by the end user to be usable. A native package is already packaged and configured in a way, that it works perfectly fine for the individual distribution. Not to mention CLI apps, which Flatpak does not support and it's my preferred way of handling many things. Hopefully this will be addressed soon. Still Flatpak is useful today and I use a few programs.

[@TheLinuxEXP]

If you use their app, you implicitly trust them? Why would you trust a version of the app packaged by a third party that barely had any time to test it compared to a package the developer made and tested because that’s the only one they make?

[@thingsiplay]

@@TheLinuxEXP Because the distribution is an additional step, which involves the quality standards I expect with a specific maintainer and the rest of the distribution having an eye on the system. To me it is an improvement over Windows in example, that we do not get the applications directly from the developers. That means for a distribution less control over the integrity of the system. I'm not saying that I don't trust nobody. Most popular software like Firefox and LibreOffice isn't actually an issue. Otherwise I wouldn't use Flatpaks. But I mean the general trust issue and concept over ANY software. And as said, I do not hate the Flatpak. The opposite is true! Hopefully ALL distributions will support Flatpak and Flathub out of the box. But I do want distributions to continue packaging usual as business (maybe with exceptions for big and complex software such as Firefox). Because that is my preferred way of managing the system.

[@pulkitkrishna8809]

With traditional packages you have trust all those 50 developers plus at least 1packager (assuming all 50 are packaged by the same person).

[@thingsiplay]

@@pulkitkrishna8809 With a distribution package there is a second step between the 50 developers and the highly trusted distribution packager. I prefer this way.

[@iferca]

Thanks for the video! Really informative. You saved me some search and fixed some theme issues.

[@TheLinuks]

Which icon theme do you use?

[@filipealves2501]

Kora icon theme

[@TheLinuks]

@@filipealves2501 thanks

[@howling-wolf]

Would be cool if the "tutorial parts" were accessible in a written format too.

[@niztfuru]

Flatpak is awesome... people uses android will have familiarity with using flatpak and this can easy the migration

[@cjordahl]

I use the source with the most up-to-date version. It's a simple practical matter. Surprisingly, flatpack isn't always the most recent. Since my application needs are pretty mainstream I've never had any "dependency hell" problems. I appreciate the appeal of Flatpaks for developers / maintainers, and *philosophically* I like the idea of Flatpaks, but as a practical matter I just want something that is up-to-date and works with my system with minimal fuss.

[@Jedediah29]

Thanks Nick, that was a helpful video. I recently installed Fedora on a new laptop and have never used Flatpaks before (my main desktop PC has been running Archlinux for years and I've always used packages from the official Arch repositories and the AUR). When possible, I still install "old-school" packages on Fedora, but for proprietary apps like Steam or Discord, I installed the flatpak version instead. The command line basics decribed in your video come in handy! :)

[@itsjeel01]

Fedora users with an nvidia GPU would definitely like to see a detailed video on Wayland vs Xorg.

[@jgxvx]

The long and short of it is that Wayland isn‘t quite there yet and Xorg is no longer there either. 😅

[@itsjeel01]

@@jgxvx you gotta use atleast one of them, so no harm in knowing who has what better

[@hallcrash]

Kinda complicated on Fedora right now. The gimp flatpack works better then the official fedora repository package, but it can't see any printers on the system [permissions?🤷‍♂️]. There are other problems with other packages like kdenlive.. and its weird that I can have a flatpack AND a package from a dnf repository too. Libre office also dosen't load printers on Fedora [permissions?... 🙈]

[@VorpalGun]

I ran into a roadblock using flatpak with programs that have embedded terminals (such as IDEs): it ignores that I have zsh as my shell. And since /bin and /usr/bin from the host isn't available, I can't even star zsh manually. Completely unacceptable.

[@Karti200]

I would love to see some kind of AUR for Debian ;-;

[@verko-e]

what distro do you use right now? like whats your main distro? (everyone respond)

[@user-ih4ex8gm9v]

I have a Lenovo laptop (iah7h) running fedora with WQHD resolution 2560x1440 and all flatpacks are blurry

[@pablogonzales6194]

is Gnome Games (flatpak) still in development or stuck at version 40? it includes a very good nds and n64 emulators ;-)

[@razzeeee]

I think it was renamed?

[@pablogonzales6194]

@@razzeeee yes, to highscore, but there is no stable release yet