How to install applications on Raspberry Pi OS – how much time does it take to install one?

Last Updated on May 3, 2023 by pg@petergamma.org

  • Did you try to install LibreOffice on your PinePhone for almost a month, to find out, that it is not usable on the device?
  • Did you then install Abiword and Gnumeric on the PinePhone, but you needed a supporter in the PinePhone forum to assist you, since all the command line commandos you entered for it gave an error message?
  • And now, you own a Raspberry Pi.
  • You installed Ubuntu Mate on it, but touch screen did not work with it, so you have to go back to Raspberry Pi OS and enter command lines to install your apps.
  • Neither Fedora on your Raspberry Pi 4 is recommended for you, or Ubuntu desktop, who offer an App store.
  • So you installed Raspberry Pi OS on your old Raspberry.
  • Then you want to install the Pi-app store, which offers only a view apps to install.
  • You enter the command lines to install it.
  • But the installation fails and stops with an error message you don’t know how to interpret.
  • You cannot find a store in your country, who offers you an Orange Pi 5, where you could install Ubuntu or Armbian OS which offers you an app store.
  • So what to do?
  • Kajidata online from Malaysia offers an instruction how to install Libre Office on the Raspberry Pi Zero W:
  • Eventually, the instruction also works on your Raspberry Pi, so it does not take you another month to install LibreOffice on your Rasbperry Pi.
  • But if your LibreOffice installion fails again, you can still install the flatpak package for Raspberry Pi OS:

https://flatpak.org/setup/Raspberry%20Pi%20OS

  • And try to install LibreOffice from there:

https://flathub.org/apps/org.libreoffice.LibreOffice

How much time does it take until you can work with your first SBC? A very long time. That is why we miss a single board computer which runs an OS with an app store which allows an easy installation of apps.