Improving the Flatpak graphics drivers situation
Graphics drivers in Flatpak have been a bit of a pain point. The drivers have to be built against the runtime to work in the runtime. This usually isn't much of an issue but it breaks down in two cases:
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- If the driver depends on a specific kernel version
- If the runtime is end-of-life (EOL)
How we deal with this is rather primitive: keep updating apps, don't depend on EOL runtimes. This is in general a good strategy. A EOL runtime also doesn't receive security updates, so users should not use them. Users will be users though and if they have a goal which involves running an app which uses an EOL runtime, that's what they will do. From a software archival perspective, it is also desirable to keep things working, even if they should be strongly discouraged.
In all those cases, the user most likely still has a working graphics driver, just not in the flatpak runtime, but on the host system. So one naturally asks oneself: why not just use that driver?
Sebastian Wick
The solution the Flatpak team is looking into is to use virtualisation for the graphics driver, as the absolute last-resort option to keep things working when nothing else will. It's a complex and interesting solution to a complex and interesting problem.