Solved Linux Mint Flatpak Sizes A Concern

[CaffeineAddict]

flatpaks and other formats like appimage are known to take huge amounts of space, this is because every piece of software has it's own set dependencies.

Sometimes you'll have the deps from other installed software in which case download size will be smaller, however system libs are never used which all together results in bloat.

Likely reason why posted screenshots don't match with sizes is because deps are accounted in reported sizes, however not every user have same deps already installed, so you can't compare screenshots.

e.g. User A has 5/7 deps installed and user B has 0/7, so their sizes shown in software manager are not same.

This command (copied from search assistant) should give you actual software size + deps separately.

flatpak list --columns=ref,size

 

[theLegionWithin]

never really paid attention to the size of the packages - my current / is 1tb & after ~1 year of use is only 27% used. guess I could clean it up sometime... but why bother?

 

[charlie.corder]

I am

running LM 22.3 zena

Checked Krita in Flatpak and I get these results. 263mg to download and 600 mg of space.
OG TC

 

[wendy-lebaron]

this is not just linux mint. this is a general "universal package manager" problem. how to provide support for an application? without "all the bloat" that it needs to execute at all. or without some of it so it executes correctly. impossible these days. people only care about programs running. worry later about "huge" disks being "eaten" quickly.

i became turned off by flatpak quickly. because i installed three programs i think. each one required a different version of "gnome-platform"! then to have to update those files. which were 40mib or larger in size. forget it, too slow. it's a good thing i had unlimited internet back then. faster than what i have now.

unfortunately appimage has a similar problem. preferably must have all libraries that the application begs for. locally available if they're not on the system. this could include "glibc" and its relations. if the operating system is deemed too old for the application. (such as trying to run gimp 3 on debian "bullseye".) snapcraft should be the same way.

if you're complaining about krita. needing almost 4gib only to reside. (information posted on internet could be flat-out lie.) consider using the appimage. which is only about 400mib. shouldn't take a lot more than 1gib to spread out. it includes gmic. which is a pita trying to integrate both things on debian "trixie" with "apt".

lol 909mib! that has to include all the goodies. i mean, some of the ones i haven't seen yet. now i see the screenshot in the post above mine. this is just crazy! don't rely so much on "gnome software"!

 

[J_Temple]

Enjoy, though I was not the first to mention it in the thread. I merely showed the screenshot.

Clearly, I missed the earlier mentions. I am new here, so that might explain some of my ignorance.

 

[KGIII]

Likely reason why posted screenshots don't match with sizes is because deps are accounted in reported sizes, however not every user have same deps already installed, so you can't compare screenshots.

That's what I was thinking, but shouldn't each application pull in its own dependencies, regardless of other applications?

That was what I definitely recall being billed as a feature.

 

[KGIII]

Clearly, I missed the earlier mentions. I am new here, so that might explain some of my ignorance.

It's all good. Now you know about it. There are some gems among our Linux software choices.

 

[CaffeineAddict]

but shouldn't each application pull in its own dependencies, regardless of other applications?

No some deps are shared, called "runtimes".

Dependencies

Flatpak provides a number of different options for how applications can depend on other software. When setting out to build an application with Flatpak for the first time, it is therefore necessary...

docs.flatpak.org

If you're referring to sizes in screenshots, it should, but I suspect that the software manager GUI accounts only for those deps that it encountered as missing or needing to install, but does not account for already installed deps, resulting in each user pulling different set of missing deps and consequently different sizes (even though software version is same as visible)

That's the only explanation I can think of.

 

[KGIII]

That's the only explanation I can think of.

From what you've said and a few (very quick) searches, that's likely the reason.

I have a number of Flatpak applications installed. The stuff that's labeled runtimes must be universally shared among them. As I do update in the terminal with flatpak update -y (as a part of my update command). There are usually a bunch of 'runtime' entries in the stdout text.

 

[Condobloke]

I am

running LM 22.3 zena

Checked Krita in Flatpak and I get these results. 263mg to download and 600 mg of space.
OG TC

G'day Charlie ! good to see and hear from you.

Screenshot below is taken today (march 28) ...everything is the same, except for the download and disk space figures

FWIW, I only have ONE added flatpak app on my pc

 

[bob466]

never really paid attention to the size of the packages - my current / is 1tb & after ~1 year of use is only 27% used. guess I could clean it up sometime... but why bother?

I'm with you...installed on my Tower Mint Cinnamon 22.1 about two years ago.

All updates are installed and everything else which includes a 50GB VM on a 500GB SSD...the Drive is only 30.9% full...

Oh no..I've only got 323GBs left.

 

[KGIII]

I think it was resolved in this post, from @CaffeineAddict:

Solved Post in thread 'Linux Mint Flatpak Sizes A Concern'

Mar 27, 2026

but shouldn't each application pull in its own dependencies, regardless of other applications?

No some deps are shared, called "runtimes".

Dependencies

Flatpak provides a number of different options for how applications can depend on other software. When setting out to build an application with Flatpak for the first time, it is therefore necessary...

docs.flatpak.org

If you're referring to sizes in screenshots, it should, but I suspect that the software manager GUI accounts only for those deps that it encountered as missing or needing to install, but does not account for already installed deps, resulting in each user pulling different set of missing deps and consequently different sizes (even though software version is same as visible)

That's the...

• CaffeineAddict

• 

That seems like the most logical answer, and it fits the data as far as I can tell.

We have differing requirements based on what we've already installed. Some parts of Flatpaks are not unique to their application, but are shared resources -- shared among the other Flatpaks. As we get more and more of those 'runtime' files installed, our needs for additional space are lowered because we don't need duplicates for those things.

That makes the most sense to me.

It doesn't make me want to change the title to solved, but it's close. If there are better ideas, I'll entertain them equally -- unless you blame it on aliens. It's never aliens!

 

[Condobloke]

The screenshot below, is taken of the runtime screen for Video Downloader (flatpak)

The space for org.gnome.Platform serves a purpose for other things (I think) as does the org.freedesktop.Platform (again, I think)

Flatpak List returns:

condobloke@brian-desktop:~$ flatpak list
Name    Application ID    Version Branch      Installation
Video … ….VideoDownloader 0.12.30 stable      system
Mesa    …tform.GL.default 25.3.5  25.08       system
Mesa (… …tform.GL.default 25.3.5  25.08-extra system
Intel … …form.VAAPI.Intel         25.08       system
GNOME … …g.gnome.Platform         49          system

condobloke@brian-desktop:~$ flatpak --version
Flatpak 1.14.6

 

[wizardfromoz]

We have differing requirements based on what we've already installed.

I agree with that, David

My observations are as follows. I am about 160 km (100 miles) north of Brian @Condobloke , we sometimes use the same repositories servers for downloading updates and packages.

We both have LM 22.3 Zena Cinnamon, but he has a flatpak already in video downloader and I have none installed.

My figures querying Krita in Software Manager are even higher than Brian's, but pretty closely tally with those of the OP @garyn :

So 300 MB more for me to download, than Brian, and 900 MB more for me than him in installed space consumed.

I believe we will find it has something to do with libraries, runtimes, and other dependencies shared, differing between individual system configurations.

I also looked at the fact that my Software Manager also provides the option for a system package (.deb) avenue

...so installed size of 393 MB cf 3.8 GB...guess which one I will be taking if I install Krita? And getting a newer version - 5.2.2.

The OP has said

So for now I only use system or appimage applications if needed until I can gen up a test drive, download a dozen or so and see how much of my resources they use.

So we can possibly have the OP @garyn mark this as Solved.

Wizard

 

[KGIII]

So we can possibly have the OP @garyn mark this as Solved.

I agree entirely.

At least it looks solved to me. (OP wasn't originally the OP, I don't think, but became the OP based on your splitting the thread out into a new one. Thanks, by the way.)

That looks like the correct answer to me. I also have virtually the same Flatpaks installed on both of the computers I tested with.

I dare say that @CaffeineAddict nailed it and gets the credit for figuring it out.

I had considered it, but thought that I was wrong because each Flatpak was (according to my understanding) to have its own unique dependencies. My mistaken beliefs made me discount that idea. I had seen the 'runtime' files in my update, but never considered that they might be shared.

So, I was just plain wrong. I'd been led to believe that they only included that which was needed and that each contained all of its dependencies.

Now I know better, which is nice. We are, collectively, smarter for it.

(I'm reasonably satisfied with the answer. I can find no other explanation. I'm open to other answers, but they'll require a bunch of evidence for me to change from this understanding.)

 

[MikeWalsh]

It would be of concern if someone had Mint on a 16GB Drive but for me using a 500GB SSD it's nothing. View attachment 30989

500 GB.....is that ALL?

1 TB Crucial MX500 SSD here, plus a (now) 8 TB secondary Seagate Barracuda for storage. I will confess to only having 32 GB of RAM, though....

It doesn't matter if you're using Flatpak, Snap or AppImage. The former two require a 'framework' to be in place, the latter does not. They all, however, include everything required to run.....so you DO end up with massive over-duplication of certain dependencies on the system.

But they WILL always run. It's a personal choice, at the end of the day.....and with hardware capability steadily rising, generation on generation - present AI-induced hardware "crisis" notwithstanding - folks bother less & less about the space things need.


Mike.

 

[bob466]

500 GB.....is that ALL?

1 TB Crucial MX500 SSD here, plus a (now) 8 TB secondary Seagate Barracuda for storage. I will confess to only having 32 GB of RAM, though....

It doesn't matter if you're using Flatpak, Snap or AppImage. The former two require a 'framework' to be in place, the latter does not. They all, however, include everything required to run.....so you DO end up with massive over-duplication of certain dependencies on the system.

But they WILL always run. It's a personal choice, at the end of the day.....and with hardware capability steadily rising, generation on generation - present AI-induced hardware "crisis" notwithstanding - folks bother less & less about the space things need.


Mike.

I have three 500GB SSDs...two in my Tower and one in my Laptop.

I also have two 1TB portable SSDs and a few 3 and 4 TB HDDs for storage...you can never have too many.