Flatpak 1.18 Released with AMD Compute Interface Support

Flatpak 1.18 adds /dev/kfd support through DRI permissions, improving AMD GPU compute access for sandboxed Linux apps.

Flatpak 1.18 is now available as the latest stable release of the Linux application sandboxing and distribution framework.

The main update is support for AMD’s vendor-specific compute interface, /dev/kfd, via Flatpak’s existing DRI device permission. Applications with DRI device access can now also use AMD’s Kernel Fusion Driver interface for GPU compute workloads.

Flatpak 1.18 also improves the flatpak update command by delivering clearer failure messages. Plus, the release enhances flatpak-coredumpctl with improved error handling and output.

Additional improvements include faster startup for Fish shell integration and updated Simplified Chinese translations.

Lastly, this release resolves a build issue related to HAVE_LIBSYSTEMD without USE_SYSTEM_HELPER. It also ignores system bus failures during parental-control checks, replaces deprecated GTimeVal usage with g_get_real_time(), corrects some return values, and suppresses an unused-result warning in the test suite.

For additional details, see the changelog. Most users will receive the update through their Linux distribution’s package repositories once it is packaged by maintainers.

Bobby Borisov

Bobby Borisov

Bobby, an editor-in-chief at Linuxiac, is a Linux professional with over 20 years of experience. With a strong focus on Linux and open-source software, he has worked as a Senior Linux System Administrator, Software Developer, and DevOps Engineer for small and large multinational companies.

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