Flatpak is a

utility In economics, utility is a measure of a certain person's satisfaction from a certain state of the world. Over time, the term has been used with at least two meanings. * In a normative context, utility refers to a goal or objective that we wish ...

for

software deployment Software deployment is all of the activities that make a software system available for use. Deployment can involve activities on the producer (software developer) side or on the consumer ( user) side or both. Deployment to consumers is a hard t ...

and package management for

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

. It provides a

sandbox A sandbox is a sandpit, a wide, shallow playground construction to hold sand, often made of wood or plastic. Sandbox or sand box may also refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * Sandbox (band), a Canadian rock music group * Sandbox (Gu ...

environment in which users can run

application software Application software is any computer program that is intended for end-user use not operating, administering or programming the computer. An application (app, application program, software application) is any program that can be categorized as ...

in (partial) isolation from the rest of the system. Flatpak was known as xdg-app until 2016.

Features

Applications using Flatpak need permissions to access resources such as

Bluetooth Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology standard that is used for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances and building personal area networks (PANs). In the most widely used mode, transmission power is li ...

, sound (with PulseAudio), network, and files. These permissions are configured by the maintainer of the Flatpak and can be added or removed by users on their system. Another key feature of Flatpak allows application developers to directly provide updates to users without going through

Linux distribution A Linux distribution, often abbreviated as distro, is an operating system that includes the Linux kernel for its kernel functionality. Although the name does not imply product distribution per se, a distro—if distributed on its own—is oft ...

s, and without having to package and test the application separately for each distribution. Because Flatpak runs in a sandbox (which provides a separate, ABI-stable version of common system libraries), it uses more space on the system than common native packages. However,

OSTree libostree (previously OSTree) is a system for versioning updates of Linux-based operating systems. It can be considered "Git Git () is a distributed version control system that tracks versions of files. It is often used to control source ...

, a technology underlying Flatpak, deduplicates matching files. This means that the first few Flatpak installations will occupy more space, but as more packages are added, the system will use space more efficiently.

Flathub

''Flathub'', a centralized repository (or remote source in the Flatpak terminology) located at , is the ''de facto'' standard for obtaining applications packaged with Flatpak. Packages are contributed by both Flathub administrators and application developers, with a stated preference for submissions from the developers themselves. Although ''Flathub'' is the de facto source for applications packaged with Flatpak, it is possible to host a Flatpak repository that is independent of Flathub.

Support

Theoretically, Flatpak apps can be installed on any existing and future

, including those installed with the

Windows Subsystem for Linux Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is a component of Microsoft Windows that allows the use of a GNU/Linux environment from within Windows, foregoing the overhead of a virtual machine and being an alternative to dual booting. The WSL command-lin ...

compatibility layer, so long as Bubblewrap and

are available. It can also be used on

Linux kernel The Linux kernel is a Free and open-source software, free and open source Unix-like kernel (operating system), kernel that is used in many computer systems worldwide. The kernel was created by Linus Torvalds in 1991 and was soon adopted as the k ...

-based systems like

ChromeOS ChromeOS, sometimes styled as chromeOS and formerly styled as Chrome OS, is an operating system designed and developed by Google. It is derived from the open-source operating system and uses the Google Chrome web browser as its principal user ...

References

External links

Flatpak website

Flathub website
{{freedesktop.org Free software programmed in C Freedesktop.org Linux installation software Linux package management-related software Linux-only free software Operating system technology Software distribution Virtualization software

Features

Flathub

Support

See also

References

External links