Recently, Canonical announced that Ubuntu and all of its official spins would no longer ship with Flatpak installed out of the box. Of course, anyone can install Flatpak on any of the official versions of the open-source operating system, but some might prefer not to have to take the extra steps.

If that sounds like you, there's a new unofficial spin, called Ubuntu Flatpak. As you might expect, this version is a pretty straightforward take on Ubuntu, only with Flatpak pre-installed.

To take this one step further, Ubuntu Flatpak also installs a few of its basic apps (such as Firefox, Thunderbird, and LibreOffice) as Flatpak apps (instead of the official Snap versions installed on Ubuntu).

One very nice thing about going this route is the Flatpak version of the apps are all the latest releases, which is a departure from the traditional Ubuntu release, which often includes the stable (but not the newest) versions of common applications.

Other reasons to give Ubuntu Flatpak a try include that the most recent Mesa graphic stack (version 22.3.5) is added to improve the gaming experience and support for Flathub Portal is installed by default (so you can install Flatpak apps from the GUI app store).

As far as the UI is concerned, this Flatpak spin doesn't deviate from the standard Ubuntu desktop, so it looks and feels just like Ubuntu.

Download an ISO of Ubuntu Flatpak and give this new distribution a try. Keep in mind, however, that it's still in alpha, so there could be bugs. Another thing to keep in mind is the download is only available as a torrent, so you'll need an app like Transmission to download the file.