README.md

Flatpak is a cross-distro way to package applications as containers for Linux. It runs the applications in a sandbox with possibly limited permissions.

Install/configure Flatpak itself

sudo apt install flatpak
flatpak remote-add --user --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

You may need to log out and back in or reboot.

Flatpak updates

Warning: It is generally not a good idea to run unattended updates via systemd, as the applications can get new permissions without the user aware of the changes. -- https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Flatpak#Automatic_updates_via_systemd

Still, this is probably better than no updates.

cp -ai .config/systemd/user/flatpak-update.{service,timer} ~/.config/systemd/user/
systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user enable --now flatpak-update.timer

Installing software with Flatpak

You can search for software on Flathub.

Chrome (unofficial)

flatpak install --user flathub com.google.Chrome

D-Spy

D-Spy is a D-Bus browser/GUI.

flatpak install --user org.gnome.dspy

Firefox

flatpak install --user flathub org.mozilla.firefox

To work around an issue with Firefox preferring bitmap fonts:

mkdir -p ~/.var/app/org.mozilla.firefox/config/fontconfig/
cp -i fonts.conf ~/.var/app/org.mozilla.firefox/config/fontconfig/fonts.conf

You'll need to restart Firefox for it to pick this up.

See ../firefox.md for configuring Firefox.

Flatseal

Useful for reviewing and editing flatpak overrides.

flatpak install --user flathub com.github.tchx84.Flatseal

You can usually also do this to try things out from the perspective of the application:

flatpak ps
flatpak enter INSTANCE /bin/bash

Signal (unofficial)

flatpak install --user flathub org.signal.Signal

Spotify (unofficial)

flatpak install --user flathub com.spotify.Client

Zoom (unofficial)

flatpak install --user flathub us.zoom.Zoom

Set up convenient executables

./flatpak-wrappers.sh