Tutorials/Flatpak

Flatpak is a solution for creating sandboxed software builds for GNU/Linux systems. You can find more information here. To learn about creating flatpaks, see our flatpak tutorial.

Applications

We are building release versions of most KDE applications and distributing them on flathub, https://flathub.org. We are also building "nightly" versions of most KDE applications and distributing them from the kdeapps remote at https://distribute.kde.org. The latter builds the latest source code of the application, so expect some unstable development quirks; on the bright side, if you find one, you get to tell the developers so they can fix it!

The "app store" or software center in many distributions is able to install Flatpaks. You can simply open the flatpakrepo files with Discover or your otherwise favorite software center:

and then when you search for a KDE application it should offer to install the flatpak version.

Here's how to install a Flatpak application from the terminal:

flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists kdeapps https://distribute.kde.org/kdeapps.flatpakrepo
flatpak install kdeapps org.kde.okular

If you added both the Flathub and kdeapps repos, the flatpak command-line tool will prompt you which one you want, something like:

flatpak install okular
Looking for matches…
Remotes found with refs similar to ‘okular’:
  
 1) ‘flathub’ (system)
 2) ‘kdeapps’ (system)
  
Which do you want to use (0 to abort)? [0-2]: 2
Found ref ‘app/org.kde.okular/x86_64/master’ in remote ‘kdeapps’ (system).
Use this ref? [Y/n]: y

Using Flatpak Applications

Once a flatpak package is installed, it can be run with

flatpak run org.kde.okular

and be updated to the latest version with

flatpak update org.kde.okular