Continuing from Slackware Diary – 1

Fixed the prompt by copying .bashrc and .profile (renamed as .bash_profile) from my primary Ubuntu system. This works and I have nice color prompts in Slackware. Need to see if I have scripts from my previous Slackware days to add environment variables, aliases, etc. Life in Slackware means a lot of time on the command line.

The next task on my list was to install Flatpak so I could use apps from Flathub

The Slackbuilds flatpak page was not helpful, but Solène Rapenne’s How to use Slackware community slackbuilds gave me the necessary details. I downloaded sbotools.tar.gz and moved it to my $HOME/installs directory, which created for my Slackware installation. Then cd’d into that directory and ran the following per Solène:

$ tar xzvf sbotools.tar.gz
$ cd sbotools
$ . ./sbotools.info
$ wget $DOWNLOAD
$ md5sum $(basename $DOWNLOAD)
$ echo $MD5SUM

Everything worked. The the md5 strings matched. Then I su’d to root:

$ su
bash-5.1# sh sbotools.SlackBuild
bash-5.1# sudo /sbin/installpkg /tmp/sbotools-2.7-noarch-1_SBo.tgz
bash-5.1# sbosnap fetch
bash-5.1# sboinstall flatpak

This executed correctly. Looks like I have my own copy of slackbuilds. Seem like overkill at the time, but ….Several prompts followed, to all of which I answered yes. Looked like it was handling dependencies! I suppose this is tha magic of Slackbuilds, and it is nice.

bash-5.1# flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

Added the following to my .bash_profile in case I ever use pulse audio.

export `xprop -root -notype PULSE_SERVER | tr -d ' '`

Downloaded the VS Code flatpak file. Then …

bash-5.1# flatpak install /home/gmcdavid/installs/com.visualstudio.code.flatpakref

Looks like it installed but I cannot get it to work. It appears properly in the Development application menu, but nothing happens. I copied the icon to my desktop and clicked on it. After clicking through another prompt I ended up with the message:

Unable to run the command specified. The file or folder /home/gmcdavid/Desktop/com.visualstudio.code.desktop does not exist.

I then downloaded the flatpakref for Code OSS, another version of Visual Studio Code and repeated the process. Similar results. So I can install flatpak applications but cannot get them to work. Google did not offer any solution, though there was one suggestion that this is a KDE issue. However, this has not been a total loss. I have been through the Slackbuild process once and can do it again. There is a Slackbuild of VSCodium so I may meet my need for this application.