To see the future, run in a terminal:
$ wget https://sdk.gnome.org/nightly/keys/nightly.gpg
$ flatpak remote-add --gpg-import=nightly.gpg gnome-nightly-apps https://sdk.gnome.org/nightly/repo-apps/$ flatpak remote-add --gpg-import=nightly.gpg gnome-nightly https://sdk.gnome.org/nightly/repo/
$ flatpak install gnome-nightly org.gnome.Platform master
$ flatpak install gnome-nightly-apps org.gnome.Nautilus master
$ killall nautilus # No running instance has to be present
$ flatpak run org.gnome.Nautilus
*for Ubuntu look at the end of the post.
Results in:
Nautilus from master, updated everyday, parallel installable, in less than 3 minutes. I cannot believe this is possible. Note that due to be sandboxed with no permission handling there are things that are not working, like opening with an application.
For someone not aware of the whole platform and the Linux desktop, it’s difficult to see how many implications this bring to us and the changes that will allow in the upcoming months. This truly changes the game for GNOME (and any other desktop) as a project and platform, including 3rd party developers and companies using Linux desktops or that want to support it.
Amazing job Alex Larsson! Flatpak is the big step we needed.
In case of using Ubuntu, flatpak is still not in main repositories, it should arrive soon. In the meantime do:
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:alexlarsson/flatpak && sudo apt update && sudo apt install flatpak
And then run the commands at the start of the post.
csorianognome.wordpress.com 
WordPress has turned the double hyphen in `–gpg-import` into a single hyphen, I ended up with a remote named `–gpg-import=nightly.gpg`.
Hi Carlos
When I run “flatpak install gnome-nightly org.gnome.Platform master” terminal says “error: Remote “gnome-nightly” not found”
wordpress is messing up with the hyphens, which makes the command fail. I’m looking into it…
should be fixed now, try to run again the commands 🙂
Tried again… same result.
The real solution is to wrap snippets of code in proper code span markup. WordPress is cancer.
sorry, seems if I update from “Visual” tab instead of “Html” it brings back the issue. Should be fixed now again. Can you try?
Thank you Carlos.
Nautilus nightly is installed now \o/. I noticed two bugs with touchscreen under Wayland: back/forward buttons on top dont work and is not possible select files/folders dragging the finger on screen. When I try open any file nautilus says “unknown file”.
Yeah, just edited my blog post to explain that the application is sanboxed, so it cannot open any file if we don’t use the portals for permissions (and we don’t yet). About the wayland bugs, I will take a look, report them please, since it’s important for us for the 3.22 version 🙂
Ok all, I think I finally fixed the hyphens issue with wordpress making the command fail. Try again! 🙂
I installed a couple of apps, however the shell doesn’t pick them up because the .desktop files are in `/var/lib/flatpak/exports/share/applications` and not `/usr/share/applications` where it expects. Any idea how to configure things so that the additional flatpak folder is searched?
If anyone is curious it was as simple as:
ln -s /var/lib/flatpak/exports/share/applications ~/.local/share/applications/flatpak
That shouldn’t be necesary. I asked flatpak developers and the flatpak package should update the default environment depending on the distro mechanism e.g. adding a file in /usr/share/gdm/env.d/ or /etc/profile.d/.
You can take a look at how fedora does it, adding a file in /etc/profile.d/ that sets the env var. This is necesary until someone standardises the way environments are set up, like systemd-etc.
just for reference, systemd work is here: https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/3904
Unfortunately that’s a double en-dash and not a hyphen so it’ll still fail in the same way.
omg you are right…
It’s been a WordPress bug for as long as I can remember 😦
should be fixed now
You probably need a flatpak with this fix: https://github.com/flatpak/flatpak/pull/209
Calling `flatpak run org.gnome.Nautilus –version` returns `GNOME nautilus 3.19.2` instead of 3.21.something.
that’s fine, we didnt update the version number, but it’s definitely the last code including every day commit.
Flatpak is available in Ubuntu’s repositories starting with Ubuntu 16.10 (currently in beta)
oh perfect, thanks for the info!
Better not release a old Flatpak of Nautilus people might never upgrade, I still miss typeahead – I guess that’s why I use the AUR package that hacks it back in, otherwise everything is cozy except the file operations box locks up hard even when moving say 40 files on a SSD
Very Cool!!!!!
Snaps?
Hi Carlos
Today I updated my nautilus and now I can select folders/files using my touchscreen under Wayland and back/forward buttons on top are working. Thanks to all Gnome Team for theses fixes.
Love it.. nautilus new features and flatpak… is there any hack to allow open file in other apps?
afaik no, it requires the portals. Otherwise would be like not having flatpak at all. Although we already have holes in the flatpak specified in the manifest for access to several things, this one would be too much and it’s not possible.