I’ve noticed that some Fedora users have trouble getting the Zotero flatpak to integrate with LibreOffice Writer, so that they can insert citations and bibliographies. Either the Zotero icons appear in Writer and do nothing, or Zotero crashes when you click on the icons in Writer.
This is a short guide to making it work with the Zotero Flatpak, instead of trying an alternative method with the tarball.
The issue is that the ‘containerization’ of Flatpaks, which is normally great for security, can cause you problems when you really want two different apps to work together. You have to make one or both of the apps a bit less containerized so that they can integrate with each other.
I recommend Flatseal for managing how containerized you want/need your Flatpaks to be. For Zotero, disable Wayland windowing system, as this causes Zotero to crash when you try to integrate it with LibreOffice.
Next, assuming the Zotero plugin hasn’t installed itself in LibreOffice Writer (which it probably hasn’t if you’re having Flatpak trouble), find the plugin Zotero_LibreOffice_Integration.oxt file on your system and install it manually.
If a Flatpak is installed only for the current user, app files are stored under ~/.local/share/flatpak. If they are installed system-wide, they will be under /var/lib/flatpak/.
As an example, I’m on Fedora Kinoite so the plugin is at
var/lib/flatpak/app/org.zotero.Zotero/current/71c167180affd68ee3e9e2467364930d1b5613bfa250ccfc05297
1d3ea664fbe/files/share/zotero/integration/libreoffice/Zotero_LibreOffice_Integration.oxt
Instead of trying to work from here, just copy the .oxt file to somewhere convenient, like Downloads. Then, in LibreOffice Writer, choose Tools>Extensions>Add and select the .oxt file from wherever you saved a copy.
Probably you’ll need to restart either LibreOffice, or Zotero, or both. In my case I installed LibreOffice from the Fedora repository, so I don’t know if you’d need to additionally make LibreOffice a bit less containerized if you’re using the Flatpak for that. After re-starting, Zotero icons should be fully functional.
These steps should allow you to use the Zotero Flatpak for your research/academic work in LibreOffice on Fedora.