Hello,
I use flatpak packages and I install them very easily on Fedora.
Now I want to start to use them on EndeavourOS.
I followed the wiki and every time I try to install an app, it asks me to install the “runtime” for that app.
For instance, I want to install joplin
$ flatpak install flathub net.cozic.joplin_desktop
Looking for matches…
Required runtime for net.cozic.joplin_desktop/x86_64/stable (runtime/org.freedesktop.Platform/x86_64/23.08) found in remote flathub
Do you want to install it? [Y/n]
With planify app it’s the same
$ flatpak install flathub io.github.alainm23.planify
Looking for matches…
Required runtime for io.github.alainm23.planify/x86_64/stable (runtime/org.gnome.Platform/x86_64/46) found in remote flathub
Do you want to install it? [Y/n]
What is that? I can go on with the process? Danger of instability of the system?
That is normal and expected. Flatpaks(On all distos) have dependencies on runtimes since they need to have all their dependencies inside the flatpak ecosystem.
Yes.
No particular risk of instability. Just wasted disk space.
Isn’t the joplin flatpak unofficial? Wouldn’t it be better to use the AUR package or the official appimage?
You can see the size of each runtime. It depends on how many flatpaks you install and how many different runtimes are required. If you install quite a few flatpaks it can easily get into the gigabytes of space since they can depend on different versions of the same runtime. Likely not a huge issue unless you are bandwidth constrained or tight on disk space.
That being said, I think there is much less reason to make broad use of flatpaks on an Arch-based distros than on Fedora. The repos have a borader selection of packages, Arch has the AUR and the repos have fewer restrictions on them.
