Newbie help with my first flatpak install

1

I am trying to install a flatpak to the --user context and run it. Seems like it should be straightforward but so far, no dice.

first, I installed flatpak itself to cent 7. Nothing to see here.

Second I added flathub to --user (actually this was trial and error. I first added it to the system, but realized that I had to add it to user as well. It is odd to me that I seemingly have to register flathub explicitly for --user. I would assume that I should be able to install flatpaks to the user location without being forced to configure it separately)

sudo flatpak add-remote  flathub https://dl.flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
....
sudo flatpak add-remote --user flathub https://dl.flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

next I install a flatpak

sudo flatpak install --user flathub com.obsproject.Studio
...

That seems to work. At least there are no errors. However, this doesnt work:

flatpak run com.obsproject.Studio
error: app/com.obsproject.Studio/x86_64/master not installed

Huh, well let me try again. Maybe there were errors that i missed somehow…

sudo flatpak install flathub com.obsproject.Studio
Skipping: com.obsproject.Studio/x86_64/stable is already installed

So is installed or not? Well it is talking about stable instead of master, maybe I have to specify stable?

flatpak run --user com/obsproject.Studio/x86_64/stable
error: app/com.obsproject.Studio/x86_64/stable not installed

What does flatpak list say?

flatpak list
flatpak list --user

Huh… So any ideas on where to go from here? Am I missing something (or a whole bunch of things?)

It would be really nice if the documentation was clearer on where these artifacts were actually stored. For instance the section that talks about using the --user flag makes no mention of where the flatpaks end up in the home directory…

2

Just one thing I notice, when installing as user, I believe you’re not supposed to use sudo, just run the install command as a regular user.

3

@jlgerber In flatpak documentation you’ll see that sudo is never used. All the commands start with the $ symbol, which means that the regular user is logged in. So no root privilege is needed even when installing system-wide (default). System versus user section explains it well: applications installed system-wide are available for all users, while apps installed at user level are obviously available for the single user.

I guess that if you run sudo flatpak list you might see the installed apps. I suggest you remove the applications and reinstall them without sudo.

flatpak remotes -v shows that /var/lib/flatpak and ~/.local/share/flatpak are the system and user installation paths respectively:

$ flatpak remotes -v
F: Opening system flatpak installation at path /var/lib/flatpak
F: Opening user flatpak installation at path /home/fede/.local/share/flatpak
fedora	system,oci
flathub	system
gnome-nightly	system

This is explained in the documentation here.

4

image

Can anyone help? I am trying to install an app and have no idea what I am doing. See screenshot

Many thanks (also have noted not to use sudo but did not before)
Chris

5

Hi Chris. Looks like your computer is aarch64, md.obsidian.Obsidian only available in x86_64.

6

Thank you, I have now discovered it is 32bit so think you are correct.

7

It appears that now there is an aarch64 (ARM in 64bit) build for that package that you should be able to install.

(btw neither is “32bit”)