Flatpak 0.8.3 is now available for all GNU/Linux distros

Feb 15, 2017 00:35 GMT  ·  By

Alex Larsson announced earlier the availability of a new stable update to the Flatpak 0.8 series of the open-source application sandboxing and distribution framework for Linux-based operating systems.

Flatpak 0.8.3 is here about 19 days after the release of the second maintenance update to the series, and adds a small number of improvements, including better handling of extra-data errors, improvements to buildsystem=cmake builds, as well as the implementation of updated OpenGL support that would enable Flatpak to work with OpenGL drivers out of the box.

"In addition to the regular list of bugfixes, this stable release include backports of the updated OpenGL support from master. This, in combination with the work in the runtime, allows flatpak to work out of the box with out-of-tree OpenGL drivers, including the nvidia driver," said Alex Larsson in the release notes.

Progress reporting now available when downloading extra-data

Among other improvements that have been implemented in today's Flatpak 0.8.3 stable release, we can mention that extra-data is now properly handled for Flatpak runtimes and apps, along with the ability to respect the required version. Furthermore, progress reporting is now available when downloading extra-data.

Flatpak 0.8.3 also improves the UID and GID for directories in the document portal, fixes a bug with the "flatpak list" command, which could break if certain local references aren't deployed, and updates the builder to also search for AppStream data in the /app/share/metadata directory.

Last but not least, it would appear that the Flatpak developers were forced to disable the use of user namespaces if the bubblewrap feature is Set-UID. As such, Flatpak 0.8.3 should no longer cause any problems for how Flatpak portals are identifying apps. You can download the source tarball right now from the project's GitHub page.