Alexander Larsson, the lead developer and creator of the Flatpak package system, has announced that the software works on Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). Larsson announced the development via Twitter, but didn’t give too much information away such as how to get it setup yourself. He did say, however, that it required “hacky workarounds” and that due to WSL constraints, sandboxing is “somewhat limited”.
Flatpak on windows. It"s got some hacky workarounds, but it basically works... pic.twitter.com/rHYYr45ckX
— Alexander Larsson (@gnomealex) September 14, 2018
For those who don’t use Linux, Flatpaks are a relatively new invention which aim to make software distribution easier. In the past, software packages relied on dependencies, and if they weren’t available in your Linux distribution’s repositories, you had to do without the software - or find potentially dangerous third party repositories to get said dependencies. With Flatpaks, everything you need comes bundled in one package, much like Canonical’s Snaps.
Right now, you’ll probably want to hold off getting your hands dirty with Flatpaks for WSL, as you’ll likely encounter issues along the way. Once things have been polished down the line though, being able to install Flatpak-packaged software will undoubtedly be fairly useful if you use Linux-only tools.
Source: Alexander Larsson (Twitter) via Phoronix