Yesterday I wrote about how to install and use Snap to install the latest LibreOffice 5.3. I promised to do the same with Fedora/GNOME’s alternative package format Flatpak. Needless to say this also applies for pure Debian Unstable and Debian Testing installs. For Debian Jessie you would need backports enabled. For yesterdays post on Snap, the same goes for Unstable and Testing, whereas Jessie is left out in the rain for now.
Even though there is no flatpak for the latest version 5.3 of LibreOffice yet, we will install LO 5.2.5, which then can be updated to 5.3 in a few hours or days. Setting the base framework for flatpak is a little more work as you have to install the basic runtime (at least on a KDE system, maybe it comes automaticaly with a GNOME install. OK, lets get started withthe package itself:
# apt install flatpak
Now we need to get the runtime:
$ wget https://sdk.gnome.org/keys/gnome-sdk.gpg
$ flatpak remote-add --user --gpg-import=gnome-sdk.gpg gnome https://sdk.gnome.org/repo/
$ flatpak install --user gnome org.gnome.Platform 3.20
Now you can download the flatpak package for Libreoffice from the Flatpak-Apps page. Move to the directory where the download landed and install it:
$ flatpak install --user --bundle LibreOffice.flatpak
When that is done, you can start LO from the same directory by running:
$ flatpak run org.libreoffice.LibreOffice
Updates can be performed by running:
$ flatpak update --user org.libreoffice.LibreOffice
These alternate packaging formats are ideal for installing software that is not (yet) available in your distribution or versions not yet available, like LO 5.3 in our example. Developers can install different versions of a software that do not interfer with each other for testing. Which one of the new self-contained package formats (there is also Appimage) you prefer is totaly up to you. They offer a sandboxing model that is supposed the keep them separated from the environment. In the case of Flatpak they can talk to each other by means of Flatpak Portals.