Late november was launched a development version of Flatpak that was taking the first steps to launch payment apps. Until they start to launch these types of apps we cannot know what that means exactly, but it is known that they are adding security so that those possible payments are safe. Today Flatpak 1.5.2 released and among the news we have that security has been improved so that we can pay without worrying.
To be more specific, what they have done in this version and in this sense is to continue with the work focusing on improving authenticated or protected downloads. Have added a new API in the authentication code, an OCI authenticator that is a simple username and password based option similar to HTTP authentication.
Other changes in Flatpak 1.5.2
- Fixes in the new self-sandboxing support of Flatpak's spawn portal, allowing webkit to make use of it.
- Now mShows background status in enhanced flatpak ps documents help out.
- Fix support for fd forwarding and allow_a11 flag and in sandboxing portal.
- Some improvements to the new permission set command.
- New remote option that allows you to configure the default token type (mainly for debugging).
- More information, here.
Flatpak 1.5.2 is the latest version of this application sanboxing technology on which some of the most popular next-generation packages are based. Its direct rival is Canonical's Snap, but it seems that developers are more inclined to Flatpak if we take into account the number of apps that are in Flathub and how soon they update (I am still waiting for the GIMP Snap to update to the v2.10.14). If you are interested in using it in Ubuntu, you can do it by following our tutorial How to install Flatpak on Ubuntu and open ourselves to a world of possibilities.