Install flatpaks on non-root partition

If you have installed Debian or any distribution with an encrypted root, the default layout has around 20-30 GB of /root partition and a separate /home partition.

This space never ran out for me, until I decided to start using Docker and Flatpaks. Some of the Docker images are big and take significantly large space. Same goes with Flatpak applications, they require big amounts of storage.

I have done some neat hacks to move the default installation path for Docker and flatpak to my /home/ partition instead of the root partition. While the Docker hack is for a different post. Here is how I did for flatpak apps.

I followed advice from this neat issue on flatpak repos. https://github.com/flatpak/flatpak/issues/2337

sudo mv /var/lib/flatpak /home/user
cd /var/lib
sudo ln -s /home/user/flatpak flatpak

Now some people will say that I can use flatpak's builtin directive of --user to install apps rather than moving the whole install path in a different direction. However using the --user directive is not supported when using gnome-software . It is only supported for command line installs. Changing the default path helps keep the compatibility with GUI frontends to flatpak stores.

Till Next time.