Written in C License LGPL | Operating system | |
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Developer(s) Alex Larsson, Flatpak Team Repository github.com/flatpak/flatpak Type Application virtualization | ||
Flatpak, named xdg-app until May 2016, is a software utility for software deployment, package management, and application virtualization for Linux desktop computer environments. The utility provides a sandbox environment called Bubblewrap, in which users can run applications in isolation from the rest of the system. Applications using Flatpak need permission from the user to control hardware devices or access the user's files.
The idea was first proposed in 2013 by Lennart Poettering, who published an article about it in 2014. Developed as part of the freedesktop.org project (formerly known as X Desktop Group or XDG), it was originally called xdg-app. The freedesktop.org server is the canonical home of the Flatpak project.
As of February 2017, some popular apps available as Flatpaks include Blender, Skype, Spotify, LibreOffice and Pitivi.