GNOME Project's Abderrahim Kitouni announced today that the latest GNOME 3.30 desktop environment is now available as Flatpak runtimes for installation on GNU/Linux distributions from the Flathub portal.

Dubbed "Almeria" after the host city of the GUADEC 2018 conference, the GNOME 3.30 desktop environment was released on September 5, 2018, with numerous new features and lots of improvements for fans of the GNOME desktop, which is used by default in dozens of GNU/Linux distributions, including Ubuntu.

But the GNOME desktop environment is not a small project, so it takes a few weeks to arrive in the software repositories of various popular distros. This usually happens when the first point release, GNOME 3.30.1 in this case, is out, which was released last week. And now, it's available for installation as Flatpak runtimes from the Flathub repository.

"The flatpak story for GNOME 3.30 wasn't very smooth as we moved away from building the runtimes from gnome-sdk-images to the BuildStream-based gnome-build-meta, and moved from freedestkop-sdk 1.6 to 18.08. The wait is now over as the GNOME 3.30 flatpak runtimes are now available on flathub," said Abderrahim Kitouni on behalf of the GNOME Release Team.

Here's how to install GNOME 3.30 as Flatpak

If the GNOME 3.30 packages haven't arrived in the stable software repositories of your favorite GNU/Linux distribution, there's now an easy way to install it using the universal binary format known as Flatpak, which lets application developers distribute their apps across multiple Linux-based operating systems. And GNOME 3.30 is now on Flathub, the app store for Flatpak packages.

So if you wish to install the GNOME 3.30 desktop environment right now on your favorite distro, head over to the Flathub website and set up your operating system for Flatpaks. Supported distros include Ubuntu, Fedora, Linux Mint, OpenSuSE, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, Arch Linux, Debian GNU/Linux, Gentoo Linux, Solus, Endless OS, Alpine Linux, Mageia, elementary, Raspbian, and Pop!_OS.

To complete the setup, you'll have to restart your system. With the official Flathub repository installed, you can now install the GNOME 3.30 packages on your GNU/Linux distribution using the Flatpak package manager. Some of the packages are already at version 3.30.1, but they will be automatically updated to newer versions as they become available on Flathub.