Flatpaks Are Now Sort Of Working On Microsoft Windows

Flatpak creator and lead developer Alexander Larsson of Red Hat has got the basics of Flatpak applications working under Microsoft Windows 10.

Before getting too excited, while he has the basics working, obviously there are some shortcuts involved. In particular, the Flatpak support requires Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL / a.k.a. "Ubuntu Bash for Windows") as well as needing to install a Win32 X11 Server.

Additionally, due to the reliance on the Windows Subsystem for Linux rather than any native Windows support, the Flatpak apps lose their security sandboxing due to the WSL implementation not supporting seccomp secure computing.

Larsson shared the progress yesterday on Twitter:

It's fun, but we'll see if he seeks to further the support or was just a research / prototyping project. WSL though overall remains quite interesting for those that are stuck for one reason or another to using Windows.