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.

KDE apps on Flathub

We are building release versions of most KDE applications and distributing them on Flathub. For example https://flathub.org/apps/search?q=kde .

The "app store" GUI app or software center app in many Linux operating systems (for example KDE's Discover app or GNOME's Software app) is able to install Flatpaks. You can follow the Flathub guide to setup Flatpak and Flathub on your system.

You can then search for a KDE application and it should offer to install the Flatpak version.

You may also directly open the file https://dl.flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo with Discover or another GUI app store.

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

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

Using Flatpak applications

After you install a Flatpak application, you can start it from the Plasma application launcher the same as other applications.

From the terminal, you can run an installed Flatpak application:

flatpak run org.kde.okular

and update it to the latest version:

flatpak update org.kde.okular

Nightly KDE apps

We are also building "nightly" versions of most KDE applications and distributing them at cdn.kde.org/flatpak. Nightly versions build 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!

Every app has its own flatpak repository usually named <appname>-nightly. For every app there is a flatpakref file (<appid>.flatpakref) inside the repository which you can easily download and open with your software center for installation.

To install the app kate, run in a terminal the commands shown below.

Note: when asked questions, press the Enter key to accept the default answer.

flatpak install --user --or-update https://cdn.kde.org/flatpak/kde-runtime-nightly/org.kde.Platform.flatpakref
flatpak uninstall --user -y org.kde.kate
flatpak install --user --or-update https://cdn.kde.org/flatpak/kate-nightly/org.kde.kate.flatpakref
flatpak run --user org.kde.kate