Flatpak

Some proprietary applications or applications are not provided by the Debian repository. In those cases it could be better to install the Flatpak packaged version of that application. Steam and Parsec are examples of applications that are challenging to install on Debian and should be isolated using Flatpak.

Installation

The Debian package for Flatpak is flatpak. Install Flatpak with the following command:

sudo apt install flatpak

Usage

Refer to the Flatpak website for how to install applications using Flatpak.

Make application launchers find Flatpak applications

When the Flatpak applications are installed, most application launchers are not able to find them. This is because the Flatpak applications are not in a directory listed in the $PATH variable. To make those application launchers find the Flatpak applications, it is possible to create a symbolic link to the /usr/bin/ directory (or any other directory included in the $PATH variable)¹.

ln -s /var/lib/flatpak/exports/bin/<installed-flatpak-name> /usr/bin/<custom-name>

For example for Steam:

ln -s /var/lib/flatpak/exports/bin/com.valvesoftware.Steam /usr/bin/steam

Flatpak-packaged applications can now be found by application launchers and the terminal, as they are added to the $PATH variable.

See also

• The Gentoo article about Flatpak.