Flatpak 1.10 Released With More Efficient Repo Format

Flatpak 1.10 is out this morning as the stable release following the Flatpak 1.9 development series for this Linux app sandboxing / distribution technology.

Most notable to the Flatpak 1.10 stable release is a new and more efficient repository format. This new format - which is already supported by Flathub - allows isolating metadata based on the CPU architecture used by the client, supports delta-based incremental updates, and other optimizations. In many cases the new repo format means no longer having to download megabytes each time but can be as little as ~20k updates. Thus it's a win for lowered bandwidth usage while also helping expand Flathub in supporting more CPU architectures thanks to the new design.

Flatpak 1.10 also has security updates and a variety of other enhancements as outlined via the release announcement.

For those not yet ready to move to the new 1.10 stable series, Flatpak 1.8.5 was released today as well that back-ports fixes whereby a malicious application could execute code outside of the sandbox.