How To Install Flatpak on Linux Mint 20

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Flatpak on Linux Mint 20. For those of you who didn’t know, Flatpak is a package management utility that allows users to install and run applications in a sandboxed or isolated environment. It’s similar to Snap apps, Flatpak aims at simplifying the management of software packages across various distributions.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of a Flatpak application distribution on a Linux Mint 20 (Ulyana).

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Linux Mint 20 (Ulyana).
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
• An active internet connection.
• A non-root sudo user or access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Install Flatpak on Linux Mint 20

Step 1. Before running the tutorial below, it’s important to make sure your system is up to date by running the following apt commands in the terminal:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install software-properties-common

Step 2. Installing Flatpak on Linux Mint 20.

By default, Flatpak is not available on the Linux Mint 20 base repository. Now we add the Flatpak repository to your system using the following command below:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:alexlarsson/flatpak

Finally, update the apt packages and install Flatpak on your Linux Mint:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install flatpak

Verify the installed version using the following command:

flatpak – version

Step 3. Flatpak Usage on Linux Mint.

Before installing an application from the repository, you can search for its availability on Flathub using the syntax:

flatpak search [application name]

For example, to search Flathub for VLC, run the command:

flatpak search vlc

To install the application from the repository, use the syntax:

flatpak install [remotes] [Application ID]

Example:

flatpak install flathub org.videolan.VLC

You can also uninstall the application through the Flatpak:

flatpak uninstall flathub org.videolan.VLC

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Flatpak. Thanks for using this tutorial to install the latest version of the Flatpak application distribution on the Linux Mint system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official Flatpak website.