Flatpak - 1 GB instead of 0.1 GB for installing Octave

[RoGeorge]

This is the first time using flatpak to install Octave on a Kubuntu 20.04 LTS.  Flatpak is the way to install the current stable Octave, according to Octave website https://www.gnu.org/software/octave/

To my surprise, Flatpack downloaded and installed an additionally 900 MB for a 100 MB Octave.
Why?  Is this normal, am I doing it right?

Code: [Select]

~$ flatpak install flathub org.octave.Octave
Looking for matches…
Required runtime for org.octave.Octave/x86_64/stable (runtime/org.kde.Sdk/x86_64/5.14) found in remote flathub
Do you want to install it? [Y/n]:

org.octave.Octave permissions:
    ipc      network     pulseaudio     wayland     x11     dri     file access [1]     dbus access [2]

    [1] host, xdg-config/kdeglobals:ro
    [2] com.canonical.AppMenu.Registrar, org.freedesktop.Flatpak


Download                      ID                                                    Branch            Op            Remote             
 94.4 MB / 94.9 MB       1. [✓] org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.default                   19.08             i             flathub             
101.9 MB / 102.0 MB      2. [✓] org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.nvidia-440-64             1.4               i             flathub           
  8.6 MB / 8.7 MB        3. [✓] org.freedesktop.Platform.VAAPI.Intel                  19.08             i             flathub             
857.5 kB / 916.8 kB      4. [✓] org.freedesktop.Platform.openh264                     2.0               i             flathub           
108.4 kB / 156.7 kB      5. [✓] org.gtk.Gtk3theme.Breeze                              3.22              i             flathub           
 16.8 kB / 340.6 MB      6. [✓] org.kde.Sdk.Locale                                    5.14              i             flathub             
684.7 MB / 769.8 MB      7. [✓] org.kde.Sdk                                           5.14              i             flathub           
121.8 MB / 132.3 MB      8. [✓] org.octave.Octave                                     stable            i             flathub           

Installation complete.

 

[Karel]

Just install whatever package you want with "apt-get install <package>" and forget that flatpak bullshit.

When I said I prefer to compile my programs statically with some crucial libraries instead of using the libraries provided
by the system, they said that I shouldn't do that because it's a waist of memory and space, and the libraries don't get updated
when the system receives updates, etc.

Now, they sing hallellujah for flatpak which exactly does that, avoiding the system libraries... 

[RoGeorge]

Before installing with flatpak, I tried with apt install, but it didn't found octave, so I thought it's not in the repository any more.  There was an Octave in the ubuntu GUI installer (named Discover), but packages there are using 'snap', which I was trying to avoid, so I used 'flatpak' as recommended by Octave, in the hope the flatpak install will be lighter.   

I avoid snap not for the extra space required, but because snap programs seems to be starting slower when compared with native installs.

No idea why apt install didn't worked the first time, I guess apt update went wrong the first time, because the .bash-history looks like that

Code: [Select]

sudo apt update
sudo apt install octave
sudo apt install flatpack
sudo apt update
sudo apt install flatpak
sudo apt install plasma-discover-flatpak-backend
flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
flatpak install flathub org.octave.Octave
However, I was a little unfair to consider Octave being only 0.1 GB.  With Octave installed from apt install, it is not 1 GB like it was with flatpak, but it still is about 0.5 GB when counted with all the dependencies:

Code: [Select]

~$ sudo apt install octave
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
  aglfn ca-certificates-java default-jre-headless epstool gnuplot-data gnuplot-qt gsfonts imagemagick-6-common java-common libaec0 libamd2 libarpack2 libblas3 libcamd2 libccolamd2
  libcholmod3 libcxsparse3 libemf1 libfltk-gl1.3 libfltk1.3 libgfortran5 libgl2ps1.4 libglpk40 libgraphicsmagick++-q16-12 libgraphicsmagick-q16-3 libhdf5-103 liblapack3 liblqr-1-0
  liblua5.3-0 libmagick++-6.q16-8 libmagickcore-6.q16-6 libmagickwand-6.q16-6 libmetis5 liboctave7 libopenblas0 libopenblas0-pthread libplot2c2 libpstoedit0c2a libqhull7 libqrupdate1
  libqscintilla2-qt5-15 libqscintilla2-qt5-l10n libsz2 libtext-unidecode-perl libumfpack5 libwmf0.2-7 libwxbase3.0-0v5 libwxgtk3.0-gtk3-0v5 libxml-libxml-perl libxml-namespacesupport-perl
  libxml-sax-base-perl libxml-sax-expat-perl libxml-sax-perl octave-common octave-doc openjdk-11-jre-headless pstoedit tex-common texinfo
Suggested packages:
  default-jre gnuplot-doc libiodbc2-dev default-libmysqlclient-dev graphicsmagick-dbg libmagickcore-6.q16-6-extra libqscintilla2-doc libwmf0.2-7-gtk libxml-sax-expatxs-perl liboctave-dev
  fonts-dejavu-extra fonts-ipafont-gothic fonts-ipafont-mincho fonts-wqy-microhei | fonts-wqy-zenhei xfig | ivtools-bin | tgif | transfig debhelper texlive-base texlive-latex-base
  texlive-plain-generic texlive-fonts-recommended
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  aglfn ca-certificates-java default-jre-headless epstool gnuplot-data gnuplot-qt gsfonts imagemagick-6-common java-common libaec0 libamd2 libarpack2 libblas3 libcamd2 libccolamd2
  libcholmod3 libcxsparse3 libemf1 libfltk-gl1.3 libfltk1.3 libgfortran5 libgl2ps1.4 libglpk40 libgraphicsmagick++-q16-12 libgraphicsmagick-q16-3 libhdf5-103 liblapack3 liblqr-1-0
  liblua5.3-0 libmagick++-6.q16-8 libmagickcore-6.q16-6 libmagickwand-6.q16-6 libmetis5 liboctave7 libopenblas0 libopenblas0-pthread libplot2c2 libpstoedit0c2a libqhull7 libqrupdate1
  libqscintilla2-qt5-15 libqscintilla2-qt5-l10n libsz2 libtext-unidecode-perl libumfpack5 libwmf0.2-7 libwxbase3.0-0v5 libwxgtk3.0-gtk3-0v5 libxml-libxml-perl libxml-namespacesupport-perl
  libxml-sax-base-perl libxml-sax-expat-perl libxml-sax-perl octave octave-common octave-doc openjdk-11-jre-headless pstoedit tex-common texinfo
0 upgraded, 60 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 92.3 MB/93.1 MB of archives.
After this operation, 443 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]


TL;DR, TIL:
1. When common packages are missing, try apt update one more time.   

2.

Flatpak has the same advantages as snaps. However, it uses Namespaces instead of AppArmour for sandboxing. The main difference is that Flatpaks can both use libraries included in the package and shared libraries from another Flatpak.

The developer of Flatpak is the Red Hat employee Alexander Larsson.

3. Found this nice comparison table between flatpak and snap:
https://askubuntu.com/questions/866511/what-are-the-differences-between-snaps-appimage-flatpak-and-others