Documentation

Install & remove apps

Margine preinstalls about 40 apps so a creator desktop is ready the first time you log in. The everyday set is there waiting, with no install screen at first boot: Zen (browser), Thunderbird (mail), Bitwarden (passwords), LibreOffice, the GNOME core suite (Calculator, Calendar, Maps, Weather, Clocks, Contacts, and the Loupe, Papers, Showtime, Snapshot viewers), creative tools (Pinta, Audacity, EasyEffects, G4Music, Blanket), and a few extras (Fragments for torrents, Apostrophe for markdown, Smile emoji picker, Extension Manager). Margine also ships its own apps: Margine System for status and updates ([details](/docs/updates-and-rollback)), the ISO Builder, Wayland Scroll Factor for touchpad tuning, and Phone Camera, which turns an Android phone into a webcam (see [Use your phone as a webcam](/docs/phone-camera)). Four heavier creative apps (GIMP, Inkscape, darktable, OBS Studio) arrive in the background within 5-15 minutes of the first login; a notification tells you they are coming and another fires when they are ready. The opt-in gaming layer (`ujust margine-gaming`) adds Steam, Lutris, Heroic, Bottles, ProtonPlus, Protontricks and RetroArch when you ask for it. If you want less instead of more (a low-spec machine, or a PC for someone who only browses), `ujust margine-slim` and `ujust margine-naked` trim the preinstalled set down: see the ujust commands page. This page is about everything that comes after: install something new, remove something you do not use, or grab a developer tool. Everything below has a GUI path; CLI is shown only as an alternative.

Install something new: open Bazaar

Bazaar is the app store on Margine. You'll find it pinned to the dock (orange box icon) and at the top of the Activities search.

Bazaar home page with curated app collections — Bazaar home: featured apps, curated categories, search bar at the top

How to use it: type the app name into the search bar, click the result, click the big Install button. That's it. Bazaar installs the app as a Flatpak: sandboxed, no sudo, the install lives entirely inside your home directory.

Bazaar app details page with Install button — App details: description, screenshots, permissions, Install button

To remove an app: in Bazaar, click your profile (top-right) → Installed, find the app, click the trash / Remove icon. Bazaar cleans up the sandbox, the user data is wiped too unless you opted to keep it.

Bazaar Installed tab listing the user's apps with Remove buttons — Installed tab: every Flatpak you have, one-click Remove

Removing one of the apps Margine preinstalled

Same workflow. Margine's preinstalled set (Zen Browser, Thunderbird, LibreOffice, GIMP, OBS, darktable, …) is installed as Flatpak too. They all show up in Bazaar's Installed tab and can be removed there.

One caveat: the preinstall service re-checks its list at every boot, so an app you removed one by one comes back at the next reboot. That behavior is a safety net (a broken first install heals itself), but it means the supported way to permanently trim the preinstalled set is ujust margine-slim (removes the heavy creator apps and the tinkerer tools, keeps browser/mail/office and the GNOME suite) or ujust margine-naked (keeps only the bare essentials). Both stop the re-install mechanism, both are undone anytime with ujust margine-slim-restore. Details on the ujust commands page.

When a system tool needs to live at the OS level

A few things can't be Flatpaks: kernel modules, udev rules, system services. For those, Margine uses rpm-ostree from a terminal: it adds the package as a layer on top of the OS image and asks for a reboot. Open Ptyxis from the dock and run:

sudo rpm-ostree install <package-name>
systemctl reboot

Use this sparingly: each layered package makes future upgrades take a little longer. For CLI tools (htop, fd, ripgrep), prefer the next section.

Need a CLI tool? Use Homebrew (no terminal-savvy required)

Margine ships Homebrew preconfigured. From Activities, open Ptyxis (the terminal), type the command below, paste your password if asked. You don't need to learn anything else.

brew install ripgrep fd htop

That installs tools into your user account only. They don't touch the OS image at all. Update them later with brew upgrade; remove with brew uninstall <name>.

For developers: Distrobox containers

If you're building software, the right place is a Distrobox container: a full Fedora / Ubuntu / Arch / whatever inside your user account, with its own sudo and package manager, fully isolated from the host. The GUI for this is DistroShelf (preinstalled in Margine DX, available from Activities).

DistroShelf GUI for managing Distrobox containers — DistroShelf: list of containers, create / enter / remove

If you prefer the terminal:

distrobox create --name fedora-dev --image fedora-toolbox:latest
distrobox enter fedora-dev
# inside the container: full sudo + dnf, isolated from the host

CLI cheatsheet (for the curious)

Everything the GUIs above do can also be done with one line. Useful if you're scripting, automating, or asking for help in a forum and someone wants you to "run this command".

# Bazaar (Flatpak) equivalents
flatpak install   flathub com.example.App      # install
flatpak uninstall com.example.App              # remove
flatpak update                                  # update all

# rpm-ostree (layered system packages)
sudo rpm-ostree install   <package-name>
sudo rpm-ostree uninstall <package-name>
systemctl reboot
sudo rpm-ostree status                         # what's layered now

# Homebrew (CLI tools)
brew install   <tool>
brew uninstall <tool>
brew upgrade                                   # update everything

# Distrobox
distrobox list                                 # what containers you have
distrobox enter   <name>                       # open a shell inside one
distrobox stop    <name>                       # stop a running one
distrobox rm      <name>                       # delete it