Make Discover install flatpaks to user by default?

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1

Hello. I like to use discover to install flatpak apps, since it has a much more user friendly installation process than figuring out the reverse DNS address of the app or whatever that org.appname.appname format is called.

Unfortuantely, discover installs the flatpaks to the system by default, which is undesireable due to a bug mentioned here: 466559 – Discover doesn't properly handle case where system is configured to prompt for authentication for updating Flatpaks

Essentially what happens is that when discover asks for a root password, it doesn’t wait for your answer and just errors out instantly, aborting the update, making discover unusable for updating them. What I want to do is make discover install the app to the user so that it doesn’t need to ask for a password when updating flatpaks later. I can’t see any setting for it anywhere though, does anyone know a way? It seems to work just fine on the steam deck in SteamOS desktop mode.

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I used to see that issue quite a while back, but haven’t experienced the problem recently (a month or so+).

The root password pop up is displayed and stays there until I enter the password (and the update stalls until I enter password).

I know my experience is not a suggested solution, but for what reason, mine has been automagically fixed.

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3

I wish it was this simple. What happens to me is that the one specific entry is indeed stalled but the rest of the updates fail, since you can’t update one dependency without breaking everything, what usually happens is nothing gets updated.

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flatpak remotes
Look to see what system remotes are defined, most likely just flathub
sudo flatpak remote-delete flathub
flatpak --user remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://dl.flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

I believe, but don’t quote me on this, you can leave the system flatpakrepo in place, and just do the user remote setup, and if you just run flatpak install org.foo.bar as your regular user (i.e. No Sudo, or Root account) flatpak will automatically choose to install things as user flatpaks, as long as a user remote is there.

The biggest reason I advise removing the system repo, if you don’t want system-wide flatpak installations, is that with multiple flatpak repositories, you’ll have to check which repository you’re installing from in Discover, everytime you want to install a flatpak.

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Honestly if this bug wasn’t present I would just leave it be. I will give it a try later and message back once I have some time available, thanks!

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It’s possibly my update method.
First, I run zypper dup (every day).

Then (after dup) I run Discover to check for any Flatpak updates.

7

Maybe you should investigate MicroOS Aeon or Kalpa ?
Install either in a virtual machine.

They seem to be geared towards a “one machine, one operating system, for only one user” type set-up (or maybe I have it goofed up).

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I could give it a try, but openSUSE Tumbleweed works great for me, so I would rather stay than reinstall everything and set stuff up from scratch. An immutable base is also rather restrictive for me.

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I gave it a try and it seems like it works. I didn’t get any updates but installation does not ask for a password anymore and even discover says my repository is Flathub (user) so I think this is exactly what I wanted. Thanks!

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