The Flatpak Linux application sandboxing and distribution framework has been updated today to version 1.5, a major release that introduces many improvements and new features.

Highlights of the Flatpak 1.5 release include new "--or-update" option for the "flatpak install" command to perform an update operation if the application is already installed, as well as a new "flatpak mask" command that allows pinning of app versions and avoids automatic downloads.

Flatpak 1.5 also introduces support for self-updates and the ability to monitor updates for apps from the Flatpak portal, support for images tagged with labels and annotations, and support for Docker mimetypes.

Moreover, Flatpak will now always generate a history for images and flatpak-session-helper now links to more libraries. A new configuration key called "default-languages" has been added as well in Flatpak 1.5 to allow additions to the system list instead of overriding it.

Improvements and bug fixes

Among the bug fixes and other changes implemented in the Flatpak 1.5 release, we can mention minor tweaks to the command-line (CLI) behaviour and output, improved updates of exported services with dbus-broken, as well as the ability to uninstall apps even if the origin remote was force removed.

Other than that, Flatpak 1.5 will no longer display Arch columns in the terminal outout if they're all the same and addresses some cases where origin remotes weren't properly removed. You can download Flatpak 1.5 right now from our free Linux software portal.

Flatpak 1.5 should also be available for installation from the stable software repositories of your favorite GNU/Linux distribution in the coming days, which is the recommended way for all users to upgrade their Flatpak installations. More details about the Flatpak 1.5 release are available on GitHub.