Rounding out flatpaks

This article comes at a time when Flatpak recently enjoyed two significant developments. The first is the project’s v1.0 release, which came out on 20 August, 2018. As befits such a milestone, the press release ( https://flatpak.org/ press/2018-08-20-flatpak-1.0) called the new version “feature-complete,” with all the necessary resources for both developers and users. So in addition to the Flatpak commands we’ve mention in this article and support by most major GUI package managers, there are also tools to help developers package their applications as Flatpaks. If you’re a coder-type, check the “Build applications” section of Flatpak’s help (flatpak --help) for an idea of some of the utilities at your disposal.

But the launch of another initiative is arguably more interesting. The WinePak project (www.winepak.org) project utilises Flatpaks to help ease the installation of Windows programs. It does this by providing the application and an optimised Wine installation in a format that’s simple to install. It promises to do away with all the configuration-fiddling that typically comes along with Wine-based installs. While the selection at the moment is quite small, there are some top-tier games already in there, including Overwatch, World of Warcraft and League of Legends.