Upgrade installs and flatpak applications

[tandrews16]

In my years in Mageia QA, I've done many, many upgrade installs for testing purposes, but the current testing for Mageia 10 will be the first time I've done it with third-party software from Flathub installed in the Mageia I'm upgrading. Specifically, I mean the Surfshark VPN application, but it could be any of them.

So what happens to such software during an upgrade? Is it simply ignored? (The best scenario) Should I expect it to still work? Or should I remove the software before the upgrade and reinstall after? (I'd probably have to configure it again, I suppose) Or the worst case, would it make the upgrade fail?

Our wiki is silent on this question, which rather surprises me, as we frequently advise users to look into flatpak offerings if, for whatever reason, Mageia's rpms don't fill their needs. In my case, Surfshark only offers .deb packages for direct download, with flatpak for Linux distros that don't use that format. I tried converting the .deb into an rpm, but that was a dismal failure. Flatpak is the only viable option.

[sturmvogel]

As flatpaks are independent from the host system (kind of), the urpmi update will succeed. As urpmi does not "see" flatpaks, there won't be any conflict or something. As long as you still have the basic flatpak app installed on MGA10, your flatpaks will work after the host system update.

[doktor5000]

I'm also using several applications installed via flatpak and it works just fine. Update is always the same (although you can replace urpmi with dnf, I only use it to update google-chrome).

Code: Select all

urpmi --auto-update --auto; flatpak update --assumeyes

your flatpaks will work after the host system update.

Only exception is if you use proprietary graphics drivers (e.g. nvidia), you need the matching version of the flatpak runtime for those.

[tandrews16]

I thought that was the way of it, but I thought I'd ask, anyway. And, it gives other users with the same question an answer to find.

The nvidia driver thing gives me a bit of pause, though. My main production desktop has been using nvidia-current, but my GPU is at the lower end of the list of covered devices, so it probably won't be long before nvidia decides to cut it loose. Since I don't do anything graphically-demanding, I'm think of switching to nouveau to give it a good shakedown before I HAVE to use it.

[morgano]

Flatpak seem to handle graphic drivers automatically, when running flatpak update.

My workstation i write this on have during mga9 had most hardware switched, among them an old nvidia, to an amd, then now nvidia again.
Flatpacks just works, for example Chromium.
"flatpak list" tell i have flatpak support for both nvidia470 and 580 installed.

[doktor5000]

Flatpak seem to handle graphic drivers automatically, when running flatpak update.

Yes, but emphasis on "when" (or actually "if").
You can easily check, next time you install nvidia updates on the host system, try to run a flatpak application that requires graphics acceleration, without running flatpak updates beforehand.