When installing a flatpak program, nvidia drivers for flatpaks update every version

[Dragon20C]

I am installing pcsx2 flatpak version
and for what ever reason it decides it wants to install all of nvidias graphics driver

Installing runtime/net.pcsx2.PCSX2.Locale/x86_64/stable
4 metadata, 1 content objects fetched; 3 KiB transferred in 0 seconds
Installing runtime/org.freedesktop.Platform.Compat.i386/x86_64/19.08
Downloading: 115.6 MB/115.6 MB (8.9 MB/s)
4 delta parts, 46 loose fetched; 112864 KiB transferred in 14 seconds
Upgrading runtime/org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.nvidia-455-38/x86_64/1.4
Downloading extra data: 126.6 MB/126.6 MB (9.7 MB/s)
Upgrading runtime/org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.nvidia-455-45-01/x86_64/1.4
Downloading extra data: 133.2 MB/133.2 MB (8.9 MB/s)
Upgrading runtime/org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.nvidia-460-32-03/x86_64/1.4
Downloading extra data: 133.7 MB/133.7 MB (9.6 MB/s)
Upgrading runtime/org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.nvidia-460-39/x86_64/1.4
Downloading extra data: 132.9 MB/132.9 MB (10.2 MB/s)
Upgrading runtime/org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.nvidia-460-56/x86_64/1.4
Downloading extra data: 133.3 MB/133.3 MB (7.4 MB/s)
Upgrading runtime/org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.nvidia-460-67/x86_64/1.4
Downloading extra data: 133.1 MB/133.1 MB (8.9 MB/s)
Upgrading runtime/org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.nvidia-460-73-01/x86_64/1.4
Downloading extra data: 133.3 MB/133.3 MB (9.5 MB/s)
Upgrading runtime/org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.nvidia-460-80/x86_64/1.4
Downloading extra data: 132.2 MB/132.2 MB (9.4 MB/s)
Upgrading runtime/org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.nvidia-465-31/x86_64/1.4
Downloading extra data: 189.5 MB/189.5 MB (10.0 MB/s)
Installing runtime/org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.nvidia-470-57-02/x86_64/1.4
Downloading: 223.9 MB/223.9 MB (9.7 MB/s)
Installing runtime/org.freedesktop.Platform.GL32.default/x86_64/19.08
1 delta parts, 21 loose fetched; 95318 KiB transferred in 10 seconds
Installing runtime/org.freedesktop.Platform.GL32.nvidia-470-57-02/x86_64/1.4
Downloading: 273.6 MB/273.6 MB (9.4 MB/s)
Upgrading runtime/org.freedesktop.Platform.Locale/x86_64/19.08
4 metadata, 0 content objects fetched; 17 KiB transferred in 0 seconds
Upgrading runtime/org.freedesktop.Platform/x86_64/19.08
Downloading: 2.5 MB/2.5 MB
1 delta parts, 3 loose fetched; 2486 KiB transferred in 1 seconds
Installing app/net.pcsx2.PCSX2/x86_64/stable
Downloading: 13.7 MB/13.7 MB (4.6 MB/s)
1 delta parts, 15 loose fetched; 13360 KiB transferred in 3 seconds
Transaction successfully finished.

[linux-aarhus]

flatpak - snap - you name the type - these are problematic - even though they are meant to be fairly agnositc - the experiense shows the opposite.

snaps are presumably the most resilient - even those present their own issues.

when ever possible - use the packages from the repo - whether this is official or AUR.

[mithrial]

My guess is that the runtime can’t decide which driver it needs and download them dynamically and thus downloads all available versions.

However, they are probably not installed system-wide.

[Frog]

@mithrial

My guess is that the runtime can’t decide which driver it needs and download them dynamically and thus downloads all available versions.

(It’s a bit old, but I’ll answer.)

It is actually installing whatever version you are currently running on your system.

However, since on Manjaro, we get updates for NVIDIA drivers quite often (much more often than many other Linux distributions) and most users are actually rolling from versions to versions, a new runtime gets installed in order to support the new version of the drivers.

This way of doing things becomes a real issue when using Flatpaks on Manjaro when you are using an NVIDIA GPU, because your system will get clogged up with useless runtimes pretty quickly, and as you can see, it also means you will download hundreds of megabytes of updates for no benefit.

There is not much Manjaro could do about it, to be honest. The user will unfortunately have to clean up their system from time to time and delete the useless runtimes once in a while. This can be done easily in command-line with flatpak uninstall --unused. In a nutshell, it is kind of the equivalent of removing orphaned packages with Pamac or pacman.

Example on my system, which has an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970:

[frog@i56400 ~]$ flatpak uninstall --unused


        ID                                                      Branch           Op
 1.     org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.nvidia-460-32-03            1.4              r
 2.     org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.nvidia-460-56               1.4              r
 3.     org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.nvidia-460-67               1.4              r
 4.     org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.nvidia-465-27               1.4              r
 5.     org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.nvidia-465-31               1.4              r
 6.     org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.nvidia-470-42-01            1.4              r
 7.     org.gnome.Platform                                      3.38             r
 8.     org.gnome.Platform.Locale                               3.38             r

Proceed with these changes to the system installation? [Y/n]: 

@Dragon20C Hopefully it is still useful.