Flatpak

This material is work-in-progress ... More documentation and testing required. (Last edited by Atka on 21 Sep 2020.)

Flatpak is a technology for building and distributing desktop applications on GNU/Linux.

There are currently 3 main runtimes available:

• Freedesktop
  • GNOME (based on the Freedesktop runtime)
  • KDE (based on the Freedesktop runtime)

These are all hosted on Flathub.org.

Fixing Audio Issues

If you have a minimal setup and don't have access to audio devices you will need to set the XDG_RUNTIME_DIR variable. Save the following script in /etc/profile.d/xdg_runtime_dir.sh and re-login to have it set up properly.

if test -z "${XDG_RUNTIME_DIR}"; then
  export XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/tmp/$(id -u)
  if ! test -d "${XDG_RUNTIME_DIR}"; then
    mkdir -p "${XDG_RUNTIME_DIR}"
    chmod 0700 "${XDG_RUNTIME_DIR}"
  fi
fi

When you launch a Flatpak you will need to start pulseaudio as well:

pulseaudio --start && flatpak run com.example.Example

Note: many Flatpaks require dbus and pulseaudio, using apulse or pipewire will need testing. I have only tested the above solution with Flatpaks installed as --user.

• flatpak.org
• Alpine Quick Setup. Follow these simple steps to start using Flatpak
• The flatpak command
• Flatpak – a history Alexander Larsson 2018

• winepak.org
• How to Easily Install Windows Games on Linux with Winepak Nick Congleton 2018

• Why OS needs explicit support for musl? Stephen Kitt 2018