Many distros are removing Python 2 as it was EOL'd at the end of last year. Chirp is not ready for Python 3 yet so that leaves us in a bit of a bind. A flatpak (no c) is an application that runs in a completely separate sandbox and all the dependencies are in the sandbox with it so it allows systems without Python 2 (and the python 2 dependencies) to be run on a system which has no Python 2. 

Thanks,

Richard

KF5OIM