Linux package management Flatpak 1.8 released with improved P2P support

Linux package management Flatpak 1.8

The free system tool Flatpak 1.8 for package management and the virtualization of desktop applications under Linux has been released. Using a sandbox, Flatpak isolates applications from the rest of the system and, in the new version 1.8, receives improved P2P support for installing the Ostree peer-to-peer.

Improved P2P support prevents sideloads

The developer and Flatpak maintainer Alexander Larsson, who also works for Red Hat, has announced the availability of the new version and published it on the developer platform Github.

The extended P2P support should make the installation of packages and applications of local network peers unnecessary and also prevent the sideload of local storage media such as USB sticks.

However, sideloads can still be realized by means of a symbolic link, a so-called symlink, starting from /var/lib/flatpak/sideload-repos" or  /run/flatpak/sideload-repos" to the corresponding repository.

In addition, Flatpak 1.8 brings improved commands and its own Systemd unit, which must be installed separately by the user, as well as the usual bug fixes with

• Flatpaktransaction has a new signal "install-authenticator" which clients can handle to install authenticators needed for the transaction. This is done in the CLI commands.
• We now always expose the host timezone data, allowing us to expose the host /etc/localtime in a way that works better, fixing several apps that had timezone issues.
• Fix flatpak enter which didn’t work in some cases.
• We now ship a systemd unit (not installed by default) to automatically detect plugged in usb sticks with sideload repos.
• By default we no longer install the gdm env.d file, as the systemd generators work better.
• Create-usb now exports partial commits by default.
• Fix handling of docker media types in oci remotes.
• Fix subjects in remote-info -log output.

Known programs available as Flatpak

Since the beginning of 2017, several well-known programs have been released in Flatpak format, including Mozilla Firefox, Steam, Spotify and Telegram. Further information on the use of Flatpak is provided by the official website of the project as well as a tutorial of the Flatpak developers.

The Flatpak Store Flathub offers a wide selection of free Flatpaks of well-known applications.