[Solved. See explanation by @alastel@lemmy.ml below.]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/64480945

I have the same version of Ubuntu (really Kubuntu) installed on two laptops, and also the same programs (debs, flatpaks, some snap) on both; they are almost mirrors.

Today I noticed that the .local/share/flatpak/ directory in one laptop has the following subfolders:

  • db
  • repo

while the homologous directory in the other laptop has these:

  • db
  • repo
  • appstream
  • app
  • runtime
  • exports

I’m just curious: does anyone know what the extra directories in the second laptop are about? The only difference in the flatpaks between the two laptops is with the GPUs: the first has Nvidia, Mesa, Intel; the second only Mesa and Intel (so I would be expecting more directories in the first than in the second, if any…).

Cheers!

  • alastel@lemmy.mlEnglish
    5·
    4 days ago

    This looks like to me that you might have flatpaks installed in your home on the second laptop, while all your flatpaks must be installed system wide on the first one.

    You can see what is installed system or user side with

    flatpak --user list
flatpak --system list

    As for the additional directories purpose, app contains the apps (surprising i know), runtime the runtimes needed by the apps (such as say the org.kde.Platform for kde apps etc), exports the things that are exported for integration (like a bin dir you can add to PATH or the applications dir containing the .desktop files to launch apps from the desktop etc. appstream is a metadata format about apps i’m not sure exactly what they put in that dir, some cache maybe ?

    • stravanasu@lemmy.caOPEnglish
      2·
      3 days ago

      It was as you said! Thank you so much for explaining the difference and showing the commands 🙏 I wonder how I managed to install user-side on one laptop, since the standard flatpak install ... (without sudo) seems to install system-side anyway. But now I’ve managed to have an identical setup :)