elementary OS 6 Beta 2 is the First Step to Have Flatpak Apps Out-of-the-box

elementary OS 6 “Odin” beta release gave us a sneak peek on a variety of interesting things that are in motion for the final release.

Now, the second beta release, i.e. elementary OS 6 Beta 2 is starting to make sense of the ambitious plans that the development team has for the stable release soon.

This release is meant for testing and development, do not install it on your production system.

What’s New in elementary OS 6 Beta 2?

elementary OS 6 beta 2 brings in three major key upgrades along with under-the-hood improvements.

First, the improvements to the installer.

There are a few UI tweaks to the installer for a cleaner and consistent look. You will also find a subtle animation with the installation progress instead of a static icon.

If you have been using the first beta, you will need to re-install for proper testing. The installer window did not resize, which was a problem for me to test using a virtual machine setup.

The next major highlight is the addition of first party Flatpak applications. While they already made it clear that they want to transition to Flatpak packages for any pre-installed apps, now they are finally making progress.

As mentioned in the beta 2 release announcement:

elementary OS 6 now comes with Calculator, Camera, Document Viewer, Screenshot, Tasks, and Web from the AppCenter Flatpak repository.

So, you should expect more first-party applications to embrace Flatpak packaging. It will also make its way to third-party applications available in the App Center (which the developers can follow to make their applications available as a Flatpak package).

Of course, this may also encourage other distributions to adopt Flatpak applications to provide a secure sandbox experience out of the box.

The last important addition with this release is the ability to add online accounts from the System settings.

You can add both mail and calendar accounts, note that both IMAP and CalDav standards are supported.

Once you add the accounts, it will show up in apps like Calendar, Tasks, and Mail making the experience seamless.

Other Improvements

Along with several under-the-hood improvements, other significant changes include:

Improved notification system that supports icon badges and action buttons
Updating the documentation before the final release
Web supports dark style theme

For more information on the latest beta release, you can explore the release announcement.

Download elementary OS 6 Beta 2

You can download the beta 2 for public testing from its official builds page. It is worth noting that only GitHub sponsors can access early/daily builds.

elementary OS 6 Beta 2

I’m excited about elementary OS 6, what about you? Drop your thoughts in the comments section below.