Hot Topic: Uhh, All Ubuntu Flavors Have Agreed to Not Use Flatpak

Flatpak is no longer going to be preinstalled in any of the official Ubuntu flavours.

All of the lead developers working on Ubuntu’s offshoots have agreed to no longer include Flatpak, preinstall Flatpak apps, or bundle plugins to let users install Flatpak apps through a GUI software tool,

The move applies to all 8 Ubuntu flavors and takes effect with the Ubuntu 23.04 release.

But why is this happening, and why now?

According to Ubuntu’s developers, this move will ‘improve the out-of-the-box Ubuntu experience’ for new users by making it clearer about what an “Ubuntu experience” actually is.

I.e., not Flatpak.

The worry is that if someone chose an Ubuntu flavor providing Flatpak out-of-the-box — as Xubuntu and Ubuntu MATE do at present — one might assume Flatpak receives the same degree of development attention and support as DEB and Snap packages.

And that is not the case.

For Ubuntu, only DEB and snap software is intrinsic to the ‘Ubuntu experience’. That experience should be offered everywhere. Flavor leads (apparently) are in agreement, and will match the main Ubuntu release by no longer using Flatpak features in their default install.

Of curse, “not installed by default” is not the same as “not available to install”.

Flatpak is available in the Ubuntu repos, and will continue to be. Users of Ubuntu flavors are free to install Flatpak (or any other kind of software format) on their system, manually, as is their wont.

For those currently using an Ubuntu flavour that preinstalled Flatpak, there’s no need to put off an upgrade to Ubuntu 23.04 later this year as Flatpak (and any related packages) will not be removed for those who already use it.

Is this a weird decision?

This is a controversial announcement, made a bit odd by talk of “agreement” amongst leads to do this.

I can understand Canonical not wanting to ship Flatpak OOTB in Ubuntu, but flavors agreeing not to makes less sense. They are, by their nature, there to offer an alternatives to a vanilla Ubuntu experience, to add and augment; plug gaps; cater to different needs, etc.

Offering Flatpak feels like a key facet of differentiation.

Ubuntu asking – or telling, more likely – its flavors to stop using something because it doesn’t use it is a head scratcher.

Flavors often use things Ubuntu doesn’t—things one could argue are more intrinsic to an “Ubuntu experience”, like the same installer, login manager, theme, and display server.

Why single out Flatpak?

Flatpak is hardly an obscure or stale package. It’s not languishing in the universe repo alongside other software that hasn’t updated in decades, but (somehow) still works for the handful of people who know about it.

Flatpak is robust, actively developed, and incredibly popular. No matter how much some may want it to vanish, it’s only going to continue to grow in popularity amongst users and software vendors.

It doesn’t matter which side of the ‘Flatpak vs snaps’ fence people fall (or straddle to get their posterior splinters from). I advocate a “use what works for you” approach to Linux. Snaps – great! AppImages – cool! Nix – have at it! PPAs only – you do you, pal.

Yet effectively blanket banning Flatpak from default installs by making this change and not underpinning it with any sort of technical reason why it’s undermining the “Ubuntu experience” seems …It seems off.

Ubuntu is drawing an ideological line in the sand no-one has asked it to make.

Which feels opposite to what Ubuntu stands for.