I’d like to ask about the direction of Flatpak support in upcoming Ubuntu releases.
Before that, I just want to say that Ubuntu has a special place for me. Back in 2008, I requested CDs from Europe and they were kindly shipped to Türkiye. I shared them with many friends and introduced Ubuntu to people around me.
Given that Ubuntu strongly promotes Snap, is there any intention to improve or officially support Flatpak integration before Ubuntu 26?
Many users rely on Flatpak for certain applications, so it would be helpful to understand whether this is being considered in the development branch, or if Snap will remain the main focus.
Thank you, I appreciate you pointing out that you’re not in a position to answer.
For others in the community, I’d like to ask: I do respect Ubuntu’s Snap packages, and I’ll likely use them for about 75% of my system. However, for the remaining 25% (such as browsers and similar apps), I prefer Flatpak.
Will there be an official Flatpak store integration, or are we expected to install and manage a separate store ourselves? What is the current direction or decision on this?
It was mentioned that they’ll eventually work on unifying everything. But if I may offer some advice, it’s better to use a separate store. Download Bazaar and manage your Flatpaks from there.
You ask about support plans before Ubuntu 26. You are too late. The release of Ubuntu 26.04 LTS is almost upon us. It is way too late to add features that were not part of the plan originally.
I will provide you with a link to an interview with Jon Seager, Canonical’s Vice President of Engineering. He talks about Ubuntu of the future and he mentions Flatpak.
The thing is that the option to have multiple stores is not always the answer. It’s been a big problem for Fedora. In reality, every time you add another store, you are essentially giving those people root on your machine. With .DEBs, you run maintainer scripts as root. The negative way of looking at it is that Canonical has root.
This is how I understand the situation. Canonical takes a certain amount of responsibility for the applications in the Ubuntu Repositories (Software Center/App Store). Flatpak applications are in an app store that Canonical has no responsibility for. To integrate a Flatpak store into Ubuntu would be give root access to unverified software. If things go wrong people would blame Ubuntu developers.
Canonical does accept some level of responsibility for Debian and snap packaged applications. I doubt that Canonical will ever take responsibility for Flatpaks that are not in a Ubuntu Flatpak store. To set up such a Ubuntu store would require the time of a lot of Ubuntu developers to audit every application.
Jon Seager sees the future of Ubuntu as being a snap application only version of Ubuntu. No Debian packages and no Flatpak packages.
P.S. Read the link to Fedora. It is a long read but enlightening.
the minus sign near “gnome-software-plugin-snap-" is used to prevent gnome-software from also installing snaps which I prefer to reserve for App Center.
after installing gnome-sofware you can download a flatpak app and then just click on it to install.
Flatpak is supported in the sense that you can install Flatpaks without haywiring or destroying your system, and fellow Flatpak users are welcome to participate in our Support and Help section to help with Flatpak problems.
Flatpak is not supported in the sense that the Flatpak package manager is not included with a stock install of Ubuntu, Ubuntu won’t take responsibility for trusting your Flatpak sources, Ubuntu does not test Flatpaks with new releases, and paid Canonical engineers won’t fix bugs in Flatpaks.
Let’s clarify that:
Ubuntu is compatible with Flatpak. Ubuntu has been compatible with Flatpak for a very long time. Ubuntu doesn’t “hate” Flatpak.
Flatpak’s package manager is in the Ubuntu repositories. It’s trivial to install with a single apt command.
Ubuntu has standardized on debs/snaps for a consistent experience, easier community support, and to minimize technical debt. Nobody has suggested breaking Flatpak compatibility.
That’s how it has been since 23.04. I’m not aware of any changes for 26.04.
That’s the official method recommended by Flathub, but I still insist that Bazaar is a better app. There’s nothing wrong with having two stores on one computer. In fact, you could even choose not to have any at all and just use the terminal :D. But in my personal experience, Gnome Software ends up running really slowly once you add three different repositories to it.