The huge-looking sizes are not representative of actual size on disk. On first installation of one app of a kind, their runtime packages get installed as well. For example, installing GNOME apps will install the latest GNOME runtime. But after that, installing any other GNOME app takes little to no space.
In your case, you don’t seem to have any apps installed as Flatpaks, which means even the freedesktop runtimes are missing and need to be installed. That’s probably why it looks so huge.
Yeah, I sort of wish you could just launch them from the terminal like any other app. flatpak -run com.whatever.whatever is a bit tedious and half the time I have to go into /var/lib/.../ to figure out what the app is officially called anyway.
That said, for stuff that isn’t in the official repos and (for Arch people) isn’t available as a binary on the AUR or seems kinda sketchy to install from the AUR, then flatpak is a great option. For “app” stuff, like Spotify I am a fan of flatpak.
Try adding ~/.local/share/flatpak/exports/ (for system flatpaks the path should be /usr/share/flatpak/exports/) to your PATH, then you can autocomplete and start the applications just with their appIDs. Also these launchers, might include some addional default run arguments you did not know about. And you can of course use aliases to make new launcher names that correspond to whatever you feel is right. (e.g. firefox, blender)
My impression of flatpak is that it was built by someone who doesn’t like or use a terminal.
Why are they so god-damn big? Let’s look at a few pieces of software on Linux Mint
Stellarium: Real-time photo-realistic sky generator
Blender: Very fast and versatile 3D modeller/renderer
VLC: VLC media player, the open-source multimedia player
I ran “apt remove vlc --purge && apt autoremove && apt install vlc” to double check, because that seemed insane.
The huge-looking sizes are not representative of actual size on disk. On first installation of one app of a kind, their runtime packages get installed as well. For example, installing GNOME apps will install the latest GNOME runtime. But after that, installing any other GNOME app takes little to no space.
In your case, you don’t seem to have any apps installed as Flatpaks, which means even the freedesktop runtimes are missing and need to be installed. That’s probably why it looks so huge.
Yeah, I sort of wish you could just launch them from the terminal like any other app.
flatpak -run com.whatever.whateveris a bit tedious and half the time I have to go into/var/lib/.../to figure out what the app is officially called anyway.That said, for stuff that isn’t in the official repos and (for Arch people) isn’t available as a binary on the AUR or seems kinda sketchy to install from the AUR, then flatpak is a great option. For “app” stuff, like Spotify I am a fan of flatpak.
Try adding
~/.local/share/flatpak/exports/(for system flatpaks the path should be/usr/share/flatpak/exports/) to yourPATH, then you can autocomplete and start the applications just with theirappIDs. Also these launchers, might include some addional default run arguments you did not know about. And you can of course usealiasesto make new launcher names that correspond to whatever you feel is right. (e.g. firefox, blender)Hope this info helps.
Just use fish or setup autocompletions and suggestions on your terminal.