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[HELP] Attempting to enable flathub through command line on Fedora Silverblue fresh install (lemmy.ml)
submitted 17 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) by yo_scottie_oh@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml
7 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I've freshly installed Fedora Silverblue and am attempting to enable flathub by following the instructions on Fedora Flathub Setup:

Flatpak is installed by default on Fedora Workstation, Fedora Silverblue, and Fedora Kinoite. To get started, all you need to do is enable Flathub, which is the best way to get Flatpak apps. Flathub is pre-configured as a part of the Third-Party Repositories. Alternatively, you can download and install the Flathub repository file.

Now all you have to do is install apps!

The above links should work on the default GNOME and KDE Fedora installations, but if they fail for some reason you can manually add the Flathub remote by running:

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

The problem that I'm having is after I issue flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://dl.flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo and then I issue flatpak remotes it says:

Name   Options
fedora system,oci

I am expecting another line under fedora listing flathub, but it still just lists fedora.

What am I doing wrong? Is there some other step I have to do before I follow these instructions?

I believe I could easily enable flathub through the Software Manager app, but since I tend to distro hop, I'd like to do this through the command line so that I can start building a library of scripts to get up and running as effortlessly as possible after a fresh install.

Thanks!

EDIT: I'm able to add the flathub repo at the user level, which is probably good enough for my purposes since I'm the only user on most of my machines anyway, plus maybe it's supposed to be hard for me to configure anything at the machine level by nature of immutable distros.

me@fedora:~$ flatpak remote-add --user flathub https://dl.flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
me@fedora:~$ flatpak remotes
Name    Options
fedora  system,oci
flathub user
me@fedora:~$ flatpak search syncthing
Name                Description                                         Application ID                        Version              Branch      Remotes
SyncThingy          SyncThingy = Syncthing + simple tray indicator      com.github.zocker_160.SyncThingy      0.8.1                stable      flathub
Syncthing GTK       GUI and notification area icon for Syncthing        me.kozec.syncthingtk                  v0.9.4.5             stable      flathub
Syncthing Tray      Tray application for Syncthing v1 and v2            io.github.martchus.syncthingtray      2.0.6-1.c6a6063      stable      flathub
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[-] TheModerateTankie@hexbear.net 1 points 7 hours ago

As far as I understand it, the immutable fedora-based distros want as much as possible to be installed at the user level. Layering things onto the system should be reserved for things that need system level access to work properly, like maybe a driver or something like that, which might not have been included.

It's a better practice for stability and security.

[-] ashleythorne@lemmy.world 3 points 11 hours ago

Sometimes

flatpak remote-modify --enable flathub

is necessary.

[-] illusionist@lemmy.zip 3 points 16 hours ago

I'd reboot

[-] yo_scottie_oh@lemmy.ml 2 points 15 hours ago

Rebooted, still have the same issue.

[-] kumi@feddit.online 2 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

No errors or output from the add?

I don't see anything wrong in what you are doing assuming you have permissions but if it's just for your user you can flatpak --user to install in your homedir instead of system-wide.

Also convenient for distro-hoppers as you can just share or copy the flatpak dirs between home directories so you don't even have to redownload for every reinstall.

[-] yo_scottie_oh@lemmy.ml 2 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

No errors or output from the add?

No errors or output when I run the command in my OP, but when I remove the --if-not-exists option (flatpak remote-add flathub https://dl.flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo), then it returns error: Remote flathub already exists. Yet, issuing flatpak remotes still only lists fedora.

I haven't tried adding it just at my user level yet, but the fact that it says, "Remote flathub already exists," does that yield any clues as to what I should try next? I'd like to do this at the system level if I figure out how. Thanks!

EDIT: On second thought, maybe I'm not supposed to be able to configure this at the machine level because that's the point of immutable distros–they're difficult to break—so I should just configure this at the user level and call it a day? This approach will probably work well enough for my purposes anyway. Thanks for chiming in w/ the idea to use the --user option.

[-] kumi@feddit.online 1 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

Right, there's the immutable root aspect. Guessing the other answer you got fills in the missing piece there and that Silverblue perhaps mounts the system flatpaks on a different r/w filesystem than the read-only /. Check output of mount to see.

At the end of the day it's up to you if you prefer to keep the system clean and run flatpak unprivileged, or centralize updates under root.

The one catch I can think of with flatpak --user is that it obviously won't work if /home is mounted with noexec, which is otherwise a good security measure (and IMO not doing that defeats a lot of the security wins of immutable distros). Unless you apply the same mounting strategy to the flatpak xdg user dirs, which is certainly an option but not something everyone will bother with. But then again maybe that's exactly what you want anyway to make your Flatpak installations smoothly portable across distros.

this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2026
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