I know that flatpak’s are very popular, but I try to avoid using them because they are so large. I’ve called them Fatpaks, in the past. I always preferred app images… much smaller. So I was also surprised to find that flatpak was using over 1 GB of space on my system. Did I unknowingly install a flatpak application? NO!
I think, but don’t know for sure, that I’ve accidentally, installed flatpak’s in the past… then removed them. Is that the problem?
bill@bill-MS-7B79:~$ du -sh /var/lib/flatpak/
1.1G /var/lib/flatpak/
bill@bill-MS-7B79:~$ flatpak list --app
bill@bill-MS-7B79:~$ flatpak history
bill@bill-MS-7B79:~$ flatpak uninstall --unused
Nothing unused to uninstall
bill@bill-MS-7B79:~$ du -sh /var/lib/flatpak/
1.1G /var/lib/flatpak/
bill@bill-MS-7B79:~$ sudo flatpak repair
[sudo] password for bill:
Working on the system installation at /var/lib/flatpak
Checking remotes...
Pruning objects
Erasing .removed
bill@bill-MS-7B79:~$ du -sh /var/lib/flatpak/
82M /var/lib/flatpak/
bill@bill-MS-7B79:~$
So even though I’m not using any flatpak’s… sudo flatpak repair, recovered over 1 GB of space!