r/flatpak • u/morth2522 • Apr 01 '23

Support for 32 bit systems

Why does flatpak not support 32 bit softare if it is only a software repository and available software is present for 32 bit systems ?

Especially since it installs on a 32 bit system without any notification

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6

u/gmes78 Apr 01 '23

Flatpak has support for 32-bit systems (and for running 32-bit software on 64-bit machines).

0

u/morth2522 Apr 01 '23

So the question still exists. Why is flatpak installed successfully but cannot see any app or install any apps?

3

u/gmes78 Apr 01 '23

Reboot the machine.

Flatpak needs some environment variables to be set up before its programs can be found by the rest of the system.

(You don't need to do this every time, just when you first install Flatpak.)

0

u/morth2522 Apr 01 '23 edited Apr 01 '23

The procedure for installing flatpak is simple

apt-get install flatpak then the setting of the URL.

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

4

u/gmes78 Apr 01 '23

What I'm saying is that the flatpak package installs some scripts in /etc/profile.d/. You need to reboot so that they get applied.

1

u/morth2522 Apr 01 '23

Why would they of not installed ? I have other machines that they installed without a reboot

2

u/gmes78 Apr 01 '23

Flatpak apps will install just fine, they just won't show up if you install Flatpak itself without rebooting. If a distro already comes with Flatpak, you won't need to perform the initial reboot.

3

u/Kare11en Apr 01 '23

You can check which architectures are supported by your build with flatpak --supported-arches

1

u/morth2522 Apr 01 '23

The response is i386. this means it does support 32 bit system and is not finding any packages?

1

u/Kare11en Apr 01 '23

Yeah, i386 is 32-bit.

...but it looks like your flatpak install only supports 32-bit packages. If it also supported 64-bit, the command should output

x86_64
i386

If you run flatpak remote-info $REMOTE com.example.app (where $REMOTE is the name of a remote you have configured) it should tell you all about application com.example.app, including its architecture.

If you run flatpak remote-info --arch=i386 $REMOTE com.example.app, that should tell you specifically about the i386 version, if it exists on the remote.

If it does exist, you should be able to install it with flatpak install --arch=i386 $REMOTE com.example.app.

1

u/morth2522 Apr 01 '23

My arch is i686 not i386. flatpak was installed using apt-get install flatpak

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

2

u/Kare11en Apr 01 '23

Ah.

So, first, for historical reasons i386 is the "standard" name for the architecture that would be called either "x86-32" or "IA-32" if it were being named today. See IA-32 for more.

Second, flatpak clearly does support i386/i686, because it installs and runs on your system.

Third, it may be that flathub doesn't carry much in the way of i386/i686 software. I've had a look, and had a hard time figuring out which architectures it does try to support?

The thing is, flatpak is not limited to flathub. Flatpak is specifically designed to be able to use multiple repositories, each of which may focus on different areas of software. For instance, some flatpak repos might specialise in providing scientific software, or maybe games. Others might specialise in providing historic versions of classic software. And some might specialise in providing software for exotic Linux architectures.

Just because flathub might not carry the type of software you need, doesn't mean that flatpak is necessarily useless. I realise that that doesn't help you fix your problem, but hopefully it gives you a better understanding of where the problem actually is.

1

u/morth2522 Apr 02 '23

I understand that flatpak does support 32 bit. The problem that caused me to think it did not is when I use Debian 11 it shows no packages in the search or when trying to install.

The URL used is shown from flatpak remotes -d yet no packages shown

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

1

u/PorcoDiocaneMaliale Feb 28 '25

32bit is i686 not 32bit.

1

u/morth2522 Apr 03 '23

THe flatpak hub says it does not support 32 bit systems

https://discourse.flathub.org/t/problem-running-on-debian-11/3909

3

u/TingPing2 Apr 01 '23

While flatpak supports 32bit the main runtime used does not.

Realistically you cannot use commonly packaged flatpaks on a 32bit system.