Official Ubuntu flavors will stop supporting Flatpak by default from 23.04

Ubuntu developers have agreed to no longer make software distribution system Flatpak available by default in official Ubuntu flavors. This happens from Ubuntu 23.04. From then on, Flatpak can still be installed manually by users.

Starting with the next major release, Flatpak and its plugins will no longer be installed by default in the official Ubuntu flavors. That’s what Canonical makes announced in a post on his forum. The change will take effect from Ubuntu 23.04 ‘Lunar Lobster’, which will be released in April. Flatpak is a system which allows developers to distribute Linux applications to users. After the change, users of certain Ubuntu variants will no longer be able to install such apps by default.

Ubuntu users who have already used Flatpak and want to upgrade to 23.04 will keep their Flatpak installations after the migration. As of 23.04, users who ‘have not previously interacted with Flatpak’ will only be offered software from the Ubuntu repositories and Canonical’s own Snap Store.

The change applies to all eight official Ubuntu flavors. This concerns Ubuntu variants such as Kubuntu and Xubuntu and Ubuntu MATE, which have different desktop environments and pre-installed apps than the regular version of the OS. Ubuntu itself did not offer Flatpak support by default, but certain flavors did. Users can continue to manually install Flatpak even after the change, Canonical points out. That can be done via the installation instructions provided by Flatpak.

Canonical claims in its blog post that the change will “improve the out-of-the-box Ubuntu experience for new users” while “while respecting how existing users personalize their own experiences.” Ubuntu and its flavors consider debs and snaps the “default experience” for the OS, the company said.