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Flatpak

lastmod 2025-05-24created 2019-11-169 edits

Flatpak is a next-generation technology for building and distributing desktop applications on Linux.

Flatpak (formerly xdg-app) is a utility software for software distribution, package management, and application virtualization on Linux desktop computers. Flatpak provides a sandbox environment, in which users can run applications isolated from the rest of the system. Applications that use Flatpak need permission to control the user's hardware devices and access the user's files.

The idea of using application containers in GNOME was proposed by Lennart Poettering in 2013. Lennart Poettering published a paper on it in 2014. Developed as part of the freedesktop.org project (known as the X Desktop Group, or XDG), Flatpak was originally called xdg-app.

As of February 2017February 2017, several popular applications such as Blender, Gimp, LibreOffice, Pitivi, KDE applications, Linphone, and GNOME Recipes became available on Flatpak. Some applications, including development versions of Mozilla Firefox, Skype, and Spotify, are also unofficially available on Flatpak.

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Articles

  • The future of Flatpak | GeekNews
    • [Original] The future of Flatpak (LWN.net)
    • Flatpak is currently gaining popularity among developers and users, but stagnation in the development of the project itself has emerged as a problem
    • Departures of core developers and bottlenecks are delaying new features and code reviews
    • Various enhancements such as OCI image support, finer-grained permissions, and audio access control have been proposed, but are being merged slowly
    • For the project's long-term development, adopting the container technology standard (OCI) and a Rust-based reimplementation are being discussed
    • Solving key challenges such as portal improvements, driver support, and network sandboxing is the key to Flatpak's growth
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