From the project README: 'Flatpak is a system for building, distributing and running sandboxed desktop applications on Linux.'
From flatpak(1):
Apps for Linux, right here. Welcome to Flathub, the home of hundreds of apps which can be easily installed on any Linux distribution. Browse the apps online, from your app center or the command line. Firefox but a much larger download It sandboxes any flatpakd app. Each flatpakd app will come with its own dependencies so they can be used in a sandbox environment, so the apps won't snoop on your whole filesystem can't check on your system's processes, which is.
- Flatpak is a tool for managing applications and the runtimes they use. In the Flatpak model, applications can be built and distributed independently from the host system they are used on, and they are isolated from the host system ('sandboxed') to some degree, at runtime.
- Flatpak uses OSTree to distribute and deploy data. The repositories it uses are OSTree repositories and can be manipulated with the ostree utility. Installed runtimes and applications are OSTree checkouts.
Installation
Install the flatpak package.
flatpak-builder
you will need to install the optional dependencies of elfutils and patch.Managing repositories
--user
to each command. If you want, for example, to add a repository only visible to you, you should run $ flatpak remote-add --user namelocation
. To install a package visible only to you, run $ flatpak install --user package-name
.Add a repository
To add a remote flatpak repository do:
where name is the name for the new remote, and location is the path or URL for the repository.
For example to add the official Flathub repository:
Delete a repository
To delete a remote flatpak repository do:
where name is the name of the remote repository to be deleted.
List repositories
To list all the added repositories do:
Managing runtimes and applications
Search for a remote runtime or application
Before being able to search for a runtime or application in a newly added remote repository, we need to retrieve the appstream data for it:
Then we can proceed to search for a package with flatpak search packagename
, e.g. to look for the package libreoffice
with the flathub
remote configured:
List all available runtimes and applications
To list all available runtimes and applications in a remote repository named remote do:
Install a runtime or application
To install a runtime or application do:
where remote is the name of the remote repository, and name is the name of the application or runtime to install.
flatpak install partial-name
(for example flatpak install libreoffice
).List installed runtimes and applications
To list installed runtimes and applications do:
Run applications
Binaries are available in /var/lib/flatpak/exports/bin
, which is automatically added to $PATH by /etc/profile.d/flatpak-bindir.sh
. You may have to re-login to apply the change.
Flatpak applications can also be run with the command line:
Update a runtime or application
To update a runtime or application named name do:
Uninstall a runtime or application
To uninstall a runtime or application named name do:
flatpak uninstall --unused
.Adding Flatpak .desktop files to your menu
Flatpak expects window managers to respect the XDG_DATA_DIRS environment variable to discover applications. This variable is set by the script /etc/profile.d/flatpak.sh
. Updating the environment may require restarting the session. If the launcher does not support XDG_DATA_DIRS, you can edit the list of directories scanned and add these to it:
This is known to be necessary in Awesome.
Viewing sandbox permissions of application
Flatpak applications come with predefined sandbox rules which defines the resources and file system paths the application is allowed to access.To view the specific application permissions do:
The reference of the sandbox permission names can be found on official flatpak documentation.
Overriding sandbox permissions of applications
If you find the predefined permissions of the application too lax or too restrictive you can change to anything you want using flatpak override
command.For example:
This will prevent the application access to your home folder.
Every type of permission such as device, filesystem or socket has an command line option that allows that particular permission and a separated option that denies. For example, in case of device access --device=device_name
allows access, --nodevice=device_name
denies the permission to access device.
For all permission types commands consult the manual page: flatpak-override(1)
Permission overrides can be reset to defaults with command:
Flatseal is a GUI permissions manager which offer simple point-and-click permissions operations.
Creating a custom base runtime
This article or section needs expansion.
- You may want to use an untrusted, unprivileged user account for bundling untrusted software because the software is not sandboxed during app and runtime creation.
- When distributing bundles to others, you may be legally obliged to provide the source code of some of the bundled software upon request. You may want to use ABS to build these packages from source.
You can create a custom Arch-based base runtime and base SDK for Flatpak using pacman. You can then use it for building and packaging applications. This is an alternative for personal use to the default org.freedesktop.BasePlatform
and org.freedesktop.BaseSdk
runtimes.
In addition to flatpak, you need to have installed fakeroot and for pacman hooks support also fakechroot.
First, start by creating a directory for building the runtime and possibly applications.
You can then prepare a directory for building the runtime base platform. The files subdirectory will contain what will later be the /usr
directory in the sandbox. Therefore you will need to create symbolic links so the default /usr/share
etc. from Arch can still be accessed at the usual path.
Make your host OS fonts available to the Arch runtime:
Flatpak Firefox Mac
You need and may want to adapt your pacman.conf
before installing packages to the runtime. Copy /etc/pacman.conf
to your build directory and then make the following changes:
- Remove the
CheckSpace
option so pacman will not complain about errors finding the root filesystem for checking disk space. - Remove any undesired custom repositories and
IgnorePkg
,IgnoreGroup
,NoUpgrade
andNoExtract
settings that are needed only for the host system.
Now install the packages for the runtime.
Set up the locales to be used by editing myruntime/files/etc/locale.gen
. Then regenerate the runtime’s locales.
The base SDK can be created from the base runtime with added applications needed for building packages and running pacman.
Insert metadata about runtime and SDK.
Add base runtime and SDK to a local repository in the current directory. You may want to give them appropriate commit messages such as “My Arch base runtime” and “My Arch base SDK”.
Flatpak Firefox Free
Install the runtime and SDK.
Creating apps with pacman
As an alternative to building applications the usual way, we can use pacman to create a containerized version of the regular Arch packages. Note that /usr
is read-only when creating apps, so we can not use Arch’s packages when building an app. To create a real app with pacman, we can either
- use pacman to create a runtime containing all dependencies
- and compile the app ourselves as usual or perhaps using pacman with a custom PKGBUILD tailored to Flatpak which uses
--prefix=/app
for theconfigure
script,
or we can
- use pacman to create a runtime containing the app installed with pacman
- and create a dummy app to launch it.
For doing the latter, first create a runtime using pacman such as this one for gedit. The runtime is first initialized and prepared for use with pacman.
Then the package is installed. The host’s network connection must be made available to pacman.
You can test the installation before finishing the runtime (without proper sandboxing).
Now finish building the runtime and export it to a new local repository. pacman’s GnuPG keys have permissions that may interfere and need to be removed first.
Then create a dummy app.
Now finish the dummy app. You can fine-tune the app’s access permissions when sandboxed by giving additional options when finishing the build. For possible options see the Flatpak documentation and the GNOME manifest files. Alternatively, adapt geditapp/metadata
to your needs after finishing the build but before exporting. When the metadata file is complete, export the app to the repository.
Install it along with the runtime.