14 DAY TRIAL // It looks to us like Flatpak, the open-source application sandboxing and distribution framework for GNU/Linux systems, is on its way to becoming the norm on most distributions.
Not only that GNOME Software offers support for Flatpak runtimes, but it appears that KDE's Plasma Discover graphical package manager will do too, as KDE developer Jan Grulich reports today on the upcoming availability of a Flatpak backend to implement support for handling Flatpak packages and repositories in the app.
According to the developer, Flatpak integration into KDE Plasma desktop environment is now a thing, despite the fact that it was a nightmare to get started on adding Flatpak support to KDE's Plasma Discover. With some inspiration from GNOME Software, he managed to implement support for some of the most common functionality of Flatpak.
"This is quite exciting stuff for me. There is still plenty of things we need to solve and improve, as well as adding possibility to manage Flatpak repositories which is quite important feature to have too," said Jan Grulich. "This all is already possible to try in master branch of Discover, you just need to enable Flatpak backend."
Flatpak bundles and flatpakref files are now supported
For now, Plasma Discover is capable of listing available and installed Flatpak applications, allows users to install, update, or remove them, supports launching of Flatpak packages straight from the interface, and provides out-of-the-box support for Flatpak bundles and flatpakref files.
Things are looking quite good for Flatpak integration into KDE Plasma, and it very much looks like the next time you upgrade your desktop environment to the next major KDE Plasma release, such as KDE Plasma 5.10, due for release on May 30, 2017, you'll be able to easily manipulate Flatpak packages directly from Plasma Discover.
