# Updating via Flatpak on Ubuntu 24.04

**URL:** <https://swi-prolog.discourse.group/t/updating-via-flatpak-on-ubuntu-24-04/7731>\
**Category:** Installing\
**Created:** [August 25, 2024, 6:12pm UTC](https://swi-prolog.discourse.group/t/updating-via-flatpak-on-ubuntu-24-04/7731 "2024-08-25T18:12:55Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![RobyGamboa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/51bf81/32.png) [@RobyGamboa](https://swi-prolog.discourse.group/u/RobyGamboa)\
**Post date:** [August 25, 2024, 6:12pm UTC](https://swi-prolog.discourse.group/t/updating-via-flatpak-on-ubuntu-24-04/7731/1 "2024-08-25T18:12:55Z")

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First off, I’ve been using SWI Prolog on Ubuntu for about a decade now, and I think it’s amazing. That said, recently I switched to using Flatpak for my package management tool where at all possible, as I’ve found that it provides more recent updates than the Canonical/Ubuntu apt repositories, for those applications that I use most often.

The issue I have with this approach is that I don’t want to run the interpreter in a separate window. My assumption was that typing ‘swipl’ in a console would give me an interpreter session in the same console window, not spin up a new window. If I wanted a separate window, I would use swipl-win, as indicated in most of the documentation. So I tracked down the swipl-win symlink and adjusted it to point to swipl instead. Easy fix, but then I found that every time I update my installation of SWI, the symlink gets reset. Could we not, please? Admittedly, this is a nit, but annoying, in what would otherwise be an excellent user experience. If there’s a preferred way of running swipl as the default, rather than swipl-win, I’m all ears.

Thanks much!

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**Author:** ![jan](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/swi-prolog.discourse.group/jan/32/4_2.png) [@jan](https://swi-prolog.discourse.group/u/jan)\
**Post date:** [August 26, 2024, 7:16am UTC](https://swi-prolog.discourse.group/t/updating-via-flatpak-on-ubuntu-24-04/7731/2 "2024-08-26T07:16:44Z")

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Your quick way around is to use [Installing from PPA (Ubuntu Personal Package Archive)](https://www.swi-prolog.org/build/PPA.md) or install from source. A flatpak solution is under discussion (see this forum) by splitting the flatpak into an extension flatpak that provides the libraries and CLI tools and an application flatpak that provides swipl-win. The flatpak version is still new …

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**Author:** ![RobyGamboa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/51bf81/32.png) [@RobyGamboa](https://swi-prolog.discourse.group/u/RobyGamboa)\
**Post date:** [August 26, 2024, 7:46am UTC](https://swi-prolog.discourse.group/t/updating-via-flatpak-on-ubuntu-24-04/7731/3 "2024-08-26T07:46:27Z")

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Hi, Jan:

Thanks for the clarification. I’ll drop back to using the dedicated PPA then, rather than the Canonical repo. I do plan to continue monitoring the progress of the flatpak distribution, as I hope to transition to the use of it as much as possible, rather than snap or apt-based distribution.

As feedback to the people working on the flatpak images, the natural assumption would be that swipl → swipl and swipl-win → swipl-win, not that swipl → swipl-win. If there are separate paths for startup, then keep them separate, rather than create a confusing inconsistency.