Flatpak

Flatpak is a software packaging and deployment system.

Flatpak installs, manages and runs sandboxed desktop application bundles. Application bundles run partially isolated from the wider system, using containerization techniques such as namespaces to prevent direct access to system resources. Resources from outside the sandbox can be accessed via "portal" services, which are responsible for access control; for example, the Documents portal displays an "Open" dialog outside the sandbox, then allows the application to access only the selected file.

Each application uses a specified "runtime", or set of libraries, which is available as /usr inside its sandbox. This can be used to run application bundles with multiple, potentially incompatible sets of dependencies within the same desktop environment.

Flatpak can be installed in Trisquel 12 (Ecne) by installing the flatpak package either with Synaptic Package Manager or from the command line.

To install Flatpak from the command line, run:

$ sudo apt install flatpak

This package contains the services and executables needed to install and launch sandboxed applications, and the portal services needed to provide limited access to resources outside the sandbox.

To install Flatpak, setup Flathub's "floss" subset run the following command:

$ flatpak remote-add --subset=floss flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

Notice that the "floss" subset includes some free software that only aims to launch proprietary software!