How To Install Flatpak on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Flatpak on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Flatpak is a package management and software deployment tool created to make the distribution of desktop applications on Linux easier. Flatpak is similar to Ubuntu’s Snapcraft. However, the snap technology is proprietary to Ubuntu. This is why many Linux distribution does not have support for a Snap but they have for Flatpak.

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 Flatpak on an Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa) server. You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Ubuntu 20.04, 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• 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 Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa

Step 1. First, make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running the following apt commands in the terminal.

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

Step 2. Installing Flatpak on Ubuntu 20.04.

• Install Flatpak from Ubuntu’s official repository.

Now we run the following command below to download and install Flatpak:

sudo apt install flatpak

• Install Flatpak from the PPA repository.

Run the following command to install it:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:alexlarsson/flatpak
sudo apt update
sudo apt install flatpak

You can check the version number of the application, and also verify that it is indeed installed on your system, through the following command:

$ flatpak – version
Flatpak 1.7.0

Step 3. Install Application using Flatpak.

You can now install apps from Flatpak by using flatpak a command. Use the flatpak search command followed by the application keyword to search for an app:

flatpak search vlc

Next, to install the application using Flatpak, use the flatpak install a command followed by the application package name or application ID:

flatpak install vlc

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Flatpak. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing Flatpak on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official Flatpak website.