Installing software

Luft’s system is a sealed image, so nothing is installed into it. Apps and tools live next to it instead, in your account, where updates to the system can’t break them and they can’t break the system. Schelf handles all three kinds.

Kind	Where it goes	Updates
Flatpak apps from Flathub	Your account	In Schelf, under Updates
AppImages	~/Applications, with a menu entry and icon	By themselves, a few minutes after you sign in and every six hours
Command-line tools from Fedora	A Toolbox container, with their commands in ~/.local/bin	In Schelf, under Updates

None of these need an administrator’s password.

Flatpak

Most desktop apps come from Flathub. Schelf adds Flathub the first time you install something and installs apps for your account. App pages explain each app’s permissions in plain words, and opening a .flatpakref file installs that app.

The flatpak command works too: flatpak install --user flathub org.example.App.

AppImages

Open an .AppImage file and Schelf offers to install it. It moves it into ~/Applications and adds it to Start with its own icon, so it opens like any other app. AppImages you set up earlier with other tools, such as Gear Lever, are picked up too.

Command-line tools

Command-line tools come from Fedora and go into a Toolbox container called fedora-toolbox-45. Search for them in Schelf, or open an .rpm file. Each command gets a small launcher in ~/.local/bin, so it runs in Tern like any other, without entering the container.

You can also work in the container yourself:

toolbox enter                 # a shell inside it, with your home folder
sudo dnf install gcc make     # inside the container

Toolbox containers share your home folder, so files are where you expect them.

Fonts and cursors

• Fonts install from Magpie into ~/.local/share/fonts.
• Cursor themes install from Settings, under Appearance, Get more cursors.

What doesn’t work

sudo dnf install on the system itself doesn’t work, by design: the system is the same signed image on every computer, so it can be checked at every start and updated or rolled back as a whole. Drivers and system parts come with Luft’s updates.