Flatpak is a third party software deployment and package manager application that can be installed on OpenSUSE Linux or any other major Linux distro. It allows applications to be packaged in a self contained format, which can then be installed and run on any Linux system, without needing to worry about which distribution you are running. One of the biggest benefits of Flatpak is that you can install programs which are not ordinarily available in the default OpenSUSE software repository.
Having access to Flatpak means that you will have the ability to install a lot of additional applications than what is available through installation in the official repos with zypper. To use Flatpak on OpenSUSE, we simply need to install the program, add the repos that contain the flatpak packages you wish to install, and then search for and install the packages. Flatpak will also let us manage and update the apps that we install.
In this tutorial, you will see how to install Flatpak package manager on OpenSUSE Linux. Then, we will take you through some basic usage of Flatpak so you can get started with adding repositories and installing custom software of your choice.
In this tutorial you will learn:
- How to install Flatpak on OpenSuse
- How to search for a package in Flatpak
- How to install a package with Flatpak
| Category | Requirements, Conventions or Software Version Used |
|---|---|
| System | OpenSUSE Linux |
| Software | Flatpak package manager |
| Other | Privileged access to your Linux system as root or via the sudo command. |
| Conventions |
# – requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of sudo command$ – requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user |
Install Flatpak on OpenSuse step by step instructions
Follow the step by step instructions below to install Flatpak on OpenSUSE, and get started with using the package manager to search for and install packages, or “flatpaks” on your system.
- Installation of Flatpak on OpenSUSE is very simple. Just open up a command line terminal and run the following command:
$ sudo zypper install flatpak
- Next, you will need to enable one or more Flatpak repositories (referred to as “remotes” in Flatpak lingo). The biggest and best repository would be FlatHub. Enable it by executing the following command:
$ sudo flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
- In order for the changes to take full effect, you will need to restart your system before using Flatpak:
$ reboot
- Once your system boots back up, we are ready to install some applications. There are multiple ways to search for applications to install. One method is to pull up the FlatHub website in your web browser and find something you wish to install.
Searching for an application in FlatHub Once you identify the app you want to install, just click the ‘Install’ button in your browser.
- Another way to search for an application would be to use the
flatpak searchcommand such as in the example below where we search for the ‘gimp’ application. This allows us to stay in our terminal instead of opening a web browser.$ flatpak search gimp
Searching for an application in command line terminal
- After identifying the program to install, use the
flatpak installcommand to complete installation.$ sudo flatpak install flathub org.gimp.GIMP
Flatpak is currently installing a package on OpenSUSE The syntax is as follows:
$ sudo flatpak install [repository] [com].[company].[app]
- If you want to launch the installed application from terminal:
$ flatpak run org.gimp.GIMP
- You can update all of your installed applications with:
$ sudo flatpak update
- If, later on, you decide to remove an application, use the following command syntax. In this case, we will remove the GIMP program that we installed earlier.
$ sudo flatpak uninstall org.gimp.GIMP
- To get a full list of all of your installed flatpaks, run:
$ flatpak list
And to get a list of applications only:
$ flatpak list --app
Getting a list of installed Flatpak applications on OpenSUSE
Closing Thoughts
In this tutorial, we saw how to install Flatpak on an OpenSUSE Linux system. We also learned how to use Flatpak to add a software repository, install an application, update all installed apps, remove apps, and list the apps that are installed via Flatpak. Users love Flatpak because it is easy to install and run applications, and its built in sandboxing improves stability and security.
