"Low Disk Space on Filesystem root" after installing Axolotl and Podcasts
02-24-2021, 06:34 PM
(02-24-2021, 04:27 AM)Anna Wrote: I tried to reproduce the problem on Megi's multi distro SD card. After upgrading Mobian, according to "Usage"/Storage", the "Operating System" took exactly 10 GB, "Home" 9 MB and the other directories 0 KB. After installing Gnome Podcasts, "Operating System" went down to 7,7 GB and Home up to 4,1 GB -- almost entirely due to a directory /.local/share/flatpak of a similar size. Uninstalling Podcasts did not change much about that.
Flatpak applications usually depend on a runtime (e.g. a specific Gnome version). When installing an application, it will also install that runtime if not already present, and very often that runtime is much larger than the application, since it includes all the libs and frameworks associated with, for example, Gnome or KDE. This is why often people complain that flatpak applications are huge, because the Software application will say the application is 20MB and required 1GB of downloads.. That's because that download includes the runtime.
The idea is that multiple applications can share the same core, saving space (as opposed to AppImages, where each application image will include everything, thus using up a lot of space - if I remember correctly). Of course in practice you end up with multiple versions of the same runtimes because different applications will require different versions...
Uninstalling the flatpak application will not uninstall that runtime, it will remain on your system untill you explicitly uninstall it as well. This is why free space did not change much after uninstalling Podcasts.