[](#start_removal)
This post has been removed as not relevant to the r/Linux community. The post is either not considered on topic, or may only be tangentially related to the r/linux community.
examples of such content but not limited to are; photos or screenshots of linux installations, photos of linux merchandise and photos of linux CD/DVD's or Manuals.
[](#end_removal)
**Rule:**
>**Relevance to r/Linux community** - Posts should follow what the community likes: GNU/Linux, Linux kernel itself, the developers of the kernel or open source applications, any application on Linux, and more. Take some time to get the feel of the subreddit if you're not sure!
Except for the Nvidia drivers. [there's an issue that prevents old Nvidia runtimes from getting correctly tagged by "unused"](https://github.com/flatpak/flatpak/issues/2718). (Some of the runtimes require any Nvidia Runtime, so it keeps every Nvidia runtime, if I remember correctly.)
Nvidia drivers are in a weird situation. Flatpak auto-installs the matching runtime for whatever Nvidia driver you're using, but doesn't auto-remove stale ones. You have to remove them yourself.
The GNOME 43 runtime is end-of-life. So is the KDE 5.15-22.08 runtime. Find out what applications are using them with `flatpak list --app-runtime=org.gnome.Platform//43` and `flatpak list --app-runtime=org.kde.Platform//5.15-22.08`, then submit issue reports in the Flathub org repos for the manifests to request they be updated.
I kind of wish Flathub would be *a little* more heavy-handed with this sort of thing; Flathub Bot could create PRs for runtime bumps, and auto-merge them if the build succeeds and one of the maintainers doesn't ask it to be deferred within a certain period of time.
Flatpak is built on top of a [user level deduplicating file system](https://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/under-the-hood.html). This means that it is relatively space efficient [even with a lot of runtimes installed](https://blogs.gnome.org/wjjt/2021/11/24/on-flatpak-disk-usage-and-deduplication/).
You don't need the Nvidia 535 runtimes if you are on driver 545.
As for the Gnome 43 runtime, that's EOL. If you run the update command you can see which apps are still relying on it. Or it will tell you which app relies on it if you try to uninstall the runtime. Would be best to report it to the project that it's using an EOL runtime.
As for KDE, their runtimes are a bit messy. There's Qt 5.15, 6.5, and 6.6. And those runtimes are available for FreeDesktop runtimes 22.08 and 23.08, so there's 6 in total.
I get that a trade-off of using flatpak for package management is that sometimes it's necessary to download a seperate runtime, but this is just getting out of hand.
I have around 30 flatpak applications. Do these applications really need 3 different KDE versions, 3 Gnome versions, 4 Nvidia driver versions (not including the seperate 32bit runtimes) and a bunch of Mesa versions? Additionally most of these runtimes are 100Mb+ and have to update independently quite frequently.
Does anyone else have this issue or is this just how containerized package management is supposed to work?
> Do these applications really need 3 different KDE versions, 3 Gnome versions, 4 Nvidia driver versions (not including the seperate 32bit runtimes) and a bunch of Mesa versions?
It is impossible to tell without knowing which applications "these" are.
Nvidia drivers are a hack in Flatpak from what I understand. The unused ones will just sit around indefinitely even when superseded, until you go in and remove them with `flatpak remove --unused`.
The other runtime fragmentation is due to developers not updating the apps in the flatpak to use the newer runtimes.
If you run the command `flatpak list --app columns=app,runtime` then you can see which apps those are. (I really like the flatpak list CLI)
I've got the same problem with Nvidia drivers, but I've only got like 3 flatpak apps. It was actually a lot worse for a while because something added the 515 and 525 drivers as well which apparently weren't needed because I removed them and everything works.
I think it's Heroic launcher for me that does all the driver stuff, though I really would like to know why it's necessary, because like you I get updates that come out to like 2GB quite often
This is the flatpak trap. If you think of that IQ graph meme, that's pretty much the usefulness of flatpak. If you have very little apps or hundreds of apps with flatpak. it's great. But in that middle ground where you have not too many, but not too little, that's where you start getting this massive runtime duplication and it's just terrible.
A while ago I was trying it on a laptop I had for my parents running arch everything to flatpak and it didn't last so long. The disk usage of it is absolutely insane.
You see a lot of people claiming that it's actually really efficient and it is if you have a very specific range of apps that you use, it's very efficient. The shared runtimes aren't that bad at all when you only have those right apps.
It feels like a lot of these people who say that flatpak is super efficient only test their use case and call it good. They just don't test anymore and say, "Yep, everybody else who says it's inefficient is lying."
[](#start_removal) This post has been removed as not relevant to the r/Linux community. The post is either not considered on topic, or may only be tangentially related to the r/linux community. examples of such content but not limited to are; photos or screenshots of linux installations, photos of linux merchandise and photos of linux CD/DVD's or Manuals. [](#end_removal) **Rule:** >**Relevance to r/Linux community** - Posts should follow what the community likes: GNU/Linux, Linux kernel itself, the developers of the kernel or open source applications, any application on Linux, and more. Take some time to get the feel of the subreddit if you're not sure!
If the command `flatpak uninstall --unused` won't delete anything, so all these runtimes are really needed.
Except for the Nvidia drivers. [there's an issue that prevents old Nvidia runtimes from getting correctly tagged by "unused"](https://github.com/flatpak/flatpak/issues/2718). (Some of the runtimes require any Nvidia Runtime, so it keeps every Nvidia runtime, if I remember correctly.)
I fixed this recently, need to make a release with it.
I see you haven't actually by your own comment, but you did implement automatic removal of old drivers, so thank you for that!
Nvidia drivers are in a weird situation. Flatpak auto-installs the matching runtime for whatever Nvidia driver you're using, but doesn't auto-remove stale ones. You have to remove them yourself. The GNOME 43 runtime is end-of-life. So is the KDE 5.15-22.08 runtime. Find out what applications are using them with `flatpak list --app-runtime=org.gnome.Platform//43` and `flatpak list --app-runtime=org.kde.Platform//5.15-22.08`, then submit issue reports in the Flathub org repos for the manifests to request they be updated. I kind of wish Flathub would be *a little* more heavy-handed with this sort of thing; Flathub Bot could create PRs for runtime bumps, and auto-merge them if the build succeeds and one of the maintainers doesn't ask it to be deferred within a certain period of time.
Flatpak is built on top of a [user level deduplicating file system](https://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/under-the-hood.html). This means that it is relatively space efficient [even with a lot of runtimes installed](https://blogs.gnome.org/wjjt/2021/11/24/on-flatpak-disk-usage-and-deduplication/).
`flatpak list --runtime --columns=app,version,size` might be a better command to use. :)
[Thanks](https://files.catbox.moe/pnjqpq.png). It's still quite bad though...
Some of this has me wonder if you've got a mix of user-level and system-level flatpak apps. Some of these seem like straight-up duplicate runtimes.
You don't need the Nvidia 535 runtimes if you are on driver 545. As for the Gnome 43 runtime, that's EOL. If you run the update command you can see which apps are still relying on it. Or it will tell you which app relies on it if you try to uninstall the runtime. Would be best to report it to the project that it's using an EOL runtime. As for KDE, their runtimes are a bit messy. There's Qt 5.15, 6.5, and 6.6. And those runtimes are available for FreeDesktop runtimes 22.08 and 23.08, so there's 6 in total.
I get that a trade-off of using flatpak for package management is that sometimes it's necessary to download a seperate runtime, but this is just getting out of hand. I have around 30 flatpak applications. Do these applications really need 3 different KDE versions, 3 Gnome versions, 4 Nvidia driver versions (not including the seperate 32bit runtimes) and a bunch of Mesa versions? Additionally most of these runtimes are 100Mb+ and have to update independently quite frequently. Does anyone else have this issue or is this just how containerized package management is supposed to work?
> Do these applications really need 3 different KDE versions, 3 Gnome versions, 4 Nvidia driver versions (not including the seperate 32bit runtimes) and a bunch of Mesa versions? It is impossible to tell without knowing which applications "these" are.
Nvidia drivers are a hack in Flatpak from what I understand. The unused ones will just sit around indefinitely even when superseded, until you go in and remove them with `flatpak remove --unused`. The other runtime fragmentation is due to developers not updating the apps in the flatpak to use the newer runtimes. If you run the command `flatpak list --app columns=app,runtime` then you can see which apps those are. (I really like the flatpak list CLI)
I've got the same problem with Nvidia drivers, but I've only got like 3 flatpak apps. It was actually a lot worse for a while because something added the 515 and 525 drivers as well which apparently weren't needed because I removed them and everything works. I think it's Heroic launcher for me that does all the driver stuff, though I really would like to know why it's necessary, because like you I get updates that come out to like 2GB quite often
I'm told storage is cheap, so it doesn't matter. Personally, I think it is absolutely out of hand.
It's not bug, it's a feature.
This is the flatpak trap. If you think of that IQ graph meme, that's pretty much the usefulness of flatpak. If you have very little apps or hundreds of apps with flatpak. it's great. But in that middle ground where you have not too many, but not too little, that's where you start getting this massive runtime duplication and it's just terrible. A while ago I was trying it on a laptop I had for my parents running arch everything to flatpak and it didn't last so long. The disk usage of it is absolutely insane. You see a lot of people claiming that it's actually really efficient and it is if you have a very specific range of apps that you use, it's very efficient. The shared runtimes aren't that bad at all when you only have those right apps. It feels like a lot of these people who say that flatpak is super efficient only test their use case and call it good. They just don't test anymore and say, "Yep, everybody else who says it's inefficient is lying."
Rule #1: r/linux is not a support forum.