Google Partners with Canonical to Bring Flutter to Linux
Google announced today that it is partnering with Ubuntu maker Canonical to bring Linux desktop app support to its Flutter developer environment.
“For more than a year we’ve been expanding our focus to include desktop-class experiences, both for the web and for the desktop OSes [like] macOS, Windows and Linux,” Google’s Chris Sells and Canonical’s Ken VanDine write in the announcement post. “This work includes extensive refactoring of the engine to support desktop-style mouse and keyboard input as well as resizable top-level windows, new UI capabilities that adapt well to desktop, and access to the system menu bar and standard dialogs. All of this work was to ensure that in addition to being suitable for mobile-style experiences, Flutter is ready to handle first-featured, full-sized desktop apps.”
Google has previously detailed the work it’s done to bring Flutter to Windows, Mac, and web, but today it is releasing a Linux alpha for Flutter with Canonical, which says it will help application developers publish their apps for Linux users via the Snap Store.
“Canonical is making a significant investment in Flutter by dedicating a team of developers to work alongside Google’s developers to bring the best Flutter experience to the majority of Linux distributions,” the pair says. “Canonical will continue to collaborate with Google to further improve Linux support and maintain feature parity with the other supported platforms.”