My work-around for performing an installation of the Pro Suite of Apps after a Minimal Zorin Pro Installation

Installing Zorin OS
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  1. Boot to the Zorin OS Pro live environment
  2. List the installed flatpaks and versions from the command line, e.g.,

flatpak list --app --columns=application,version > flatpaksversions.txt

  1. Create a text file of installed flatpaks, e.g.,

flatpak list --app --columns=application > flatpaks.txt

  1. Save both text files to persistent storage. For me, I mounted the computer's SSD using the Disks utility in order to copy the files from the Live USB session to my user home directory's documents folder.
  2. Shutdown the live session and boot into your Zorin Pro OS minimal installation
  3. Using the flatpaks.txt you copied into your home directory, run the following command:

xargs sudo flatpak install -y < flatpaks.txt

  1. Use the flatpakversions.txt text file to remind yourself which version to choose when prompted for flatpaks with multiple versions available.

Out of respect to the Zorin OS developers, I'm not listing the applications here. By purchasing Zorin OS Pro, the list is readily available from a Live USB session by running "sudo flatpak list".

Finally, a bit of tech gush...
Big hat tip to the Zorin OS team! I'm loving Zorin OS Pro. Runs like a champ whether I'm on a modern NVIDIA Gaming laptop from 2024, an ancient Lenovo Intel Pentium N3700 all-in-one with 8GB of RAM from 2015, or even a Microsoft Surface Go from 2020.
Big thumbs up!

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I never knew that the software with Zorin OS Pro was all exclusively Flatpaks..........

1 Like
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That is why I like Q4OS, Flatpak is an option, it is not part of the OS install but a post install option from the Application installer on the Welcome screen.

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As far as I can tell the suite of additional apps are all flatpak. When I make a quick comparison of my main system (full Pro install) to my secondary system (minimal Pro install + workaround), I haven't noticed anything missing.

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I was receiving the following warning during sudo apt updates...
mike@zlb16:~$ sudo flatpak update
Looking for updates…

Info: runtime org.kde.Platform branch 6.8 is end-of-life, with reason:
We strongly recommend moving to the latest stable version of the Platform and SDK
Info: applications using this runtime:
com.obsproject.Studio

But then I checked OBS Studio app within the Store and found that there is a Zorin OS version as well so I installed it along side the flatpak version.

The Zorin version is an earlier version of OBS Studio, but after I uninstall the flatpak version the flatpak update warning messages go away.

Might it be that the Zorin version does not do a library deprecation check?

The Flatpak version came installed with Pro.

I've just checked the project's github and just 4 days ago OBS Studio has published a release candidate, so it looks like an updated Flatpak is on its way. I assume the new version will transition to a newer org.kde.Platform module.

I've gone back to the Flatpak version for now.