Bazaar: It Belongs On All Of Your Linux Desktops

The open-source Linux operating system has never been more popular. This is a good thing for the Linux community, because choice is one of the many things that makes it good to be a penguin.

CentOS 8 was released recently, and here’s how I installed this Linux OS on my machine without needing any mobile application developers’ help.

Because there are hardware certification programs available now, however, installing a flavor of Linux—such as Ubuntu or Red Hat’s CentOS—makes better business sense than investing in Microsoft Windows licenses.

The de facto cross-distro packaging format for desktop apps is Flatpak, and Flathub is where most of those apps are…flatpacked. What many systems lack is a clear, centralized storefront to manage all of these. Bazaar fills the hole so well that it does deserve to come pre-installed on every Linux distro that supports Flatpak.

A Dedicated Home for Flatpak Apps on Your Desktop

Read more: The Apps You Love Can’t Run on Most Routers. General app centers such as GNOME Software and KDE Discover do a lot, but because they mix formats — DEB, RPM, Snap, and Flatpak — they may puzzle even experienced users. Bazaar focuses solely on Flatpak. It brings to the top what really matters in this ecosystem: clear install and update flows, trusted sources, and add-ons if an app supports them. There’s no guesswork involved in having that focus — especially on distros where everything is brewed up of native packages but all installed together in one big directory.

Flathub’s store has grown to contain thousands of applications, including popular apps like Steam, Blender, LibreOffice, GIMP, and OBS Studio, all offered as Flatpaks. Per the updates that were shared by the Flathub team and GNOME Foundation, on a daily basis, there are hundreds of thousands of installations occurring, showing how pervasive the format is in Fedora, Linux Mint, Pop!_OS, elementary OS, and rolling-release distributions such as Manjaro. Bazaar makes that scale something you can explore and manage without ever touching the command line.

Security and Transparency Take Priority in Flatpak

Flatpak’s model — enshrined at Freedesktop.org and reliant on Bubblewrap and desktop portals — separates apps from the host system. That’s only helpful if users grasp what is going on. Bazaar exposes Flatpak metadata in human-readable format: which remote an app comes from, which runtime it uses, and whether optional components are provided. With portal permissions, users can make informed decisions when an app requests file system, camera, or device access. A shop that is “Flatpak-only” eliminates a lot of confusion, like having an app that is in both native and sandboxed forms.

For businesses, that clarity has serious upside. Frequent tickets for desktop support teams often occur when people install an app as a Flatpak and then search for updates via apt or dnf. The truth is that a Flatpak-only storefront will cut down on that mismatch and reduce the cognitive load of newbies fleeing Windows and macOS.

Speed, Simplicity, and Add-ons for Better App Management

Bazaar is quick, lightweight, and provided as a Flatpak, meaning that it runs consistently on all distributions without pulling in distro-specific dependencies.

Beyond install and remove, it also makes add-ons — language packs, codec bundles, optional features — a first-class aspect of the workflow. That’s something that matters for creative and gaming stacks, where not having a plugin can nix the experience. Rather than sifting through repo pages, users can browse these extras and apply them all in one place.

Updates are equally straightforward. Since Flatpak has built-in support for atomic, per-app updates and rollbacks, Bazaar is able to simply show available upgrades without having to wait for system-wide maintenance windows. For laptops and developer workstations, it means less downtime and keeping those critical tools up to date.

Bazaar Complements Existing App Stores Across Distros

It’s not that people want to replace GNOME Software or Discover. It’s not about replacing them, but about pairing them with a tool focused on one format users turn to more and more. Many distributions already support Flathub or ship major applications as Flatpaks; including Bazaar in the mix will be a clear and non-intrusive path toward that choice.

Power users still have all the options, from command-line Flatpak to native package managers, and new users have a clean path that just works.

It’s the same reasoning behind why a lot of different desktop environments split out the system settings from power-user tools: focus should help reduce errors. A Flatpak-only store will stop you from having to risk accidental cross-format installs, eliminate the noise of duplicated app entries, and mirror how developers nowadays offer cross-distro binaries.

Real-world Fit and Adoption Across Linux Distributions

Here’s a typical scenario: a user installs the popular editor as a Flatpak on Fedora, later switching to Linux Mint on a new notebook. Using Bazaar, they browse, install, and undo add-ons the same way on both computers, regardless of their package management system. In classrooms, maker labs, and dev teams with a variance in environments, that consistency saves time and training. Confusion due to mixed packaging is a common topic in community boards for large distributions. If Bazaar defaults cleanly, then that will be at least one less annoyance.

Getting Bazaar Today on Any Flatpak-Enabled Linux System

Installation should be easy on any system with Flatpak support. Bazaar is available on Flathub with io.github.kolunmi.Bazaar as the App ID. It can be downloaded by opening a terminal and typing flatpak install flathub io.github.kolunmi.Bazaar. After installation, it shows up in the desktop menu and starts scanning available remotes at once. From there, it’s search, click, and go — the way a modern Linux app experience should be.

Flatpak is a Linux desktop standard now. Having a dedicated, shiny-clean storefront for that pillar is no longer a nice-to-have; it’s basic ergonomics. By default, shipping Bazaar would offer every user — new to the software switcher all the way down to seasoned maintainers — a reliable path for discovering, installing, and managing their everyday apps.