So you have probably noticed by now that we started offering some 3rd party software in the latest Fedora Workstation namely Google Chrome, Steam, NVidia driver and PyCharm. This has come about due to a long discussion in the Fedora community on how we position Fedora Workstation and how we can improve our user experience. The principles we base of this policy you can read up on in this policy document. To sum it up though the idea is that while the Fedora operating system you install will continue as it has been for the last decade to be based on only free software (with an exception for firmware) you will be able to more easily find and install the plethora of applications out there through our software store application, GNOME Software. We also expect that as the world of Linux software moves towards containers in general and Flatpaks specifically we will have an increasing number of these 3rd party applications available in Fedora.

So the question I know some of you will have is, what do one actually have to do in order to get a 3rd party application listed in Fedora Workstation? Well wonder no longer as we put up a few documents now outlining the steps you will need to take. Compared to traditional linux packaging the major difference in the requirements around improved metadata for your application, so we are covering that aspect in special detail. These documents cover both RPMS and Flatpaks.

First of all you can get a general overview from our 3rd Party guidelines document. This document also explains how you submit a request to the Fedora Workstation Working group for your application to be added.

Then if you want to dig into the details of what metadata you need to create for your application there is the in-depth metadata tutorial here and finally once you are ready to set up your repository there is a tutorial explaining how you ensure your repository is able to provide the metadata you created above.

We expect to add more and more applications to Fedora Workstation over time here, and I would especially recommend that you look into Flatpaking your 3rd party application as it will decouple your application from the host operating system and thus decrease the workload on you maintaining your application for use in Fedora Workstation (and elsewhere).