Insync as Flatpak (Linux)

@kusi Hey! We appreciate the redirect :slight_smile: I’ve forwarded this to our engineers and will be revisiting Flatpak/Snapcraft accordingly.

Yes, I’m certainly willing to be a tester. Is there a repo that will be populated by installing the Fedora 37 rpm so it does not block our other updates?

I will check with our engineer @Jason_Lee :slight_smile: I’ll update you here!

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Usually, insync rpms for Fedora N work on Fedora N+1. Manually overriding $releasever in /etc/yum.repos.d/insync.repo around Fedora release time has become a routine for me. Forgetting to readjust too, somewhat …

Since the insync rpm brings 300M of bundled libraries with it (yikes) it is unlikely to break with Fedora updates. Given this, Fedora beta freeze should be a safe date to build an rpm in advance of the release. Also, given that baggage, a flatpak may actually be smaller (due to runtime reuse by other flatpaks).

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Hello Insync Team,

Just wanted to check if Flatpak app for Insync is still under consideration or it has been drooped from plan?
This is almost 5 years old thread we still don’t know about any progress on this.

Hi All,

Another one here just waiting for Insync on Steam Deck

I am still hopeful that the technical challenges can be worked out on the Flatpak front. Whatever extra development efforts need to go into this on the front end of a Flatpak version would surely be made up for on the back end, because Insync would then be freed to only produce one package that would work on any and all Linux distros: Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Suse, Arch, and even the immutable desktops like the Steam Deck and Fedora Silverblue. I know QT was sighted as a challenge above, but there are a lot of QT based Flatpaks up on Flathub.org, so it seems within the realm of possibilities.

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Long time Insync user on Linux.

For what it is worth, supporting Flatpak would be my number one wish as well and I hope the technicalities are overcome.

It would be a clear benefit to the developers to focus on Flatpak instead of building so many different versions. More stable as well since insync’s dependencies won’t change if I update my distro.

I won’t have to build from the AUR on Manjaro. I won’t have to seek out rpm’s on Fedora and just auto update just like almost everything else on my system.

Yes there are snaps and app images but… flathub has basically come out on top.

Snaps are slow and proprietary and many in the Linux community have rejected them. App images are great for portability but often do not auto update and have other issues with system integration.

Pretty please. :slight_smile:

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We appreciate your enthusiasm in wanting Flatpak support! I’ll be forwarding your comments to our Product Manager.

Thank you so much!

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A flatpak would also be my number 1 wish!

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Hi @mia so what was the answer of your product manager?

Hello @kusi,

Flatpak needed to take a step back so we can prioritize major syncing issues in our engineers’ pipeline. I would be happy to raise this to our team again and assess how we can revisit developing this. Just to manage expectations, we can’t provide an ETA yet but we will update our users accordingly. :slight_smile:

Thank you!

Thank you for your update on this. As you can see from this thread, there are quite a few users who would like to see a flatpak version available. Yes, please do communicate this to your development team.

The desire for a flatpak is more than just wanting the newest, trendiest kind of package. For some of us, like myself, who use immutable Linux distributions (In my case Fedora Kinoite - but I also see from this thread that there are others like Steam Deck users.) debs and rpms are quite problematic. Hopefully, you all will be able to make progress on this in the future. Thank you.

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It would be great to have this as a Flatpak! I am very happy to help test it.

If a Flatpak is too complicated, then an AppImage would at least let us install it on Fedora Silverblue and other immutable operatings systems, without having to overlay packages over the base image.

I also use pCloud which is AppImage based, perhaps for similar reasons?

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Same, using guix here, and a flatpak would make my life simpler.

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Have good News?!

A lot of people waiting …

Hello @danielmota, please refer to this response as to Flatpak needing to take a step back from our pipeline: Insync as Flatpak (Linux)

I’d be happy to bump this up with our team once more. Thank you for understanding!

Yes. Please bump if you are able. Immutable desktops keep picking up steam (not just Silverblue, but Vanilla OS, BlendOS etc), so this would be such a great option. Even for non-immutable systems it would provide a universal install option. Like previous folks have said, I am happy to test if needed.

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I come bearing good news!

I can get insync to run on Aeon OS (The BEST implementation of immutable linux OS out there, #justsaying).

In this example, I got it to run via distrobox 1.5.

Via tumbleweed distrobox.

Thanks to a community gem, cubicleNate, you follow the tumbleweed install instructions once you are inside your tumbleweed distrobox.

Here, you might notice that Insync installs, but with some errors/issues…and you can’t successfully launch it, due to…

profetik777@tumbleweed:~/Downloads> insync start --no-daemon
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “insynclinux/gui/insync.py”, line 19, in
File “click/core.py”, line 1130, in call
File “click/core.py”, line 1055, in main
File “click/core.py”, line 1657, in invoke
File “click/core.py”, line 1404, in invoke
File “click/core.py”, line 760, in invoke
File “insynclinux/gui/cli.py”, line 140, in start
File “PyInstaller/loader/pyimod03_importers.py”, line 540, in exec_module
File “idesklinux/app.py”, line 12, in
File “PyInstaller/loader/pyimod03_importers.py”, line 540, in exec_module
File “idesklinux/platui_impl.py”, line 14, in
File “PyInstaller/loader/pyimod03_importers.py”, line 540, in exec_module
File “idesklinux/htmlui_impl.py”, line 6, in
ImportError: libQt5WebEngineCore.so.5: cannot enable executable stack as shared object requires: Permission denied
[24205] Failed to execute script insync

So, after MUCH troubleshooting, it turns out, that this is due to an SELinux security policy.

Once I run the following (ps. anytime you mess w/ SELinux, you run a security risk, so USE AT YOUR DISCRETION).

sudo setsebool -P selinuxuser_execmod 1

sudo setsebool -P selinuxuser_execstack 1

After this is enabled, I restarted the distrobox tumbleweed and ran insync start --no-daemon, and BOOM it launched!

I exported it so insync icon shows up in my gnome menu via distrobox export command,

distrobox-export --app insync

And bada-bing, insync is running on my IMMUTABLE OS with the repo active for updates.

Fingerscross this works long-term, but I think this is it.

Skip to the second half of this video I made narrating my journey lol prob skip to the end to see it in action…sorry, I was just soo pumped to get this working, insync is a fabulous product…please extend my thanks to the devs, I know linux customers seem to be a little bratty and ungrateful, but trust me, we complain about the things we love lol and are worth our attention! hehe

Can someone else see if this works?

p.s. If you are on silverblue, you might be able to do this on toolbox too, but for now, go with distrobox.

p.s.s. Link to install via cubicleNates blog

For convenience, pasted here:
Tumbleweed
I am not going to give the instructions with pictures with this step by step, its basically the same as above and my guess is, most Tumbleweed users don’t NEED pictures. :grin:

As per the instructions from the Insync site, you are recommended to import the public GPG key used to sign the RPMs.

sudo rpm --import https://d2t3ff60b2tol4.cloudfront.net/repomd.xml.key
Next add the repository and call it “Insync”

sudo zypper ar -f http://yum.insync.io/opensuse-tumbleweed/rolling/ Insync
Once the repository has been added, you will need to refresh the repositories.

sudo zypper refresh
Finally, install the application and optionally, the service menu of choice. In my case I installed the dolphin service menu addon but there are other file managers supported.

sudo zypper install insync
Like the suggestion in the Leap instructions, you can install a service menu entry with your file manager. I have chosen the insync-dolphin option but you can choose what suits your desktop best.

Complete
The installation is complete and now you can now begin syncing your files with Google or Microsoft, whatever you need to do to be more productive in your day-to-day Linux life.