Ubuntu MATE Is Dropping The Ubuntu Software Center

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Ubuntu MATE Is Dropping The Ubuntu Software Center

Ubuntu MATE developer Martin Wimpress announced this weekend that they'll be removing the Ubuntu Software Center from their default install of Ubuntu MATE 15.10...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...MATE-Drops-USC

[kaprikawn]

It's a long time since I used Software Center, can you still make a cup of tea/coffee in the time it takes to start up?

[motang]

It's a long time since I used Software Center, can you still make a cup of tea/coffee in the time it takes to start up?

I my case, I have notice that it has gotten better. It is not as slow as it once was.

[cutterjohn]

i always just stuck with synaptics as software center/store was/is a steaming pile.

[zanny]

Can we have a legitimate discussion about software stores on Linux? They are all broken, and appstreamer isn't actually fixing it. Yet, at least. And when that comes about... what is going to happen? We are going to have ~/.local/share/apps that your app store downloads when the app isn't in official repos? When xdg-app is done? Aren't we supposed to sandbox those? How will that ever intergrate with current package management solutions?

If you want to distribute software on Android, you throw an APK at Google Play. Its not a perfect solution since other vendors (Amazon, pretty much exlusively) is shipping devices without Play, but that is literally 1% of the market and you (the dev) just cannot be bothered.

For Linux, you throw it on the OBS, and then try to redistribute a half dozen packages yourself. And you still aren't supporting Arch. And nobody is accessing your stuff through a software center, ever.

Where is a community curated app market with intelligent package formats. We have kde-apps and gnome-apps... where you literally download a prebaked zip file half the time.

I guess it is up to Muon / Gnome Software to continue keeping their act together and somehow merging their software stores on a new platform that can reproduce, at the least, Google Play's functionality. It just doesn't look like thats on the horizon any time soon. And that would mean we all end up using Gnome Software (GTK) or Muon (Qt) on all desktops. Which actually sounds pretty rad, if we could get rid of all the package front ends and just have two, if those two were complete enough to serve their purpose. I know there is work in KDE space making Muon better, I just hope someone in the Gnome camp is intent to make Gnome Software work as a system package manager better as well.

[stqn]

It's a long time since I used Software Center, can you still make a cup of tea/coffee in the time it takes to start up?

Yes, at least in Xubuntu 14.04.2, it?s still extremely slow, and bugged too. Mint?s replacement is a bit slow to start, but works much much better afterwards.

[Veske]

Not sure why it's so slow too. A properly written Python application would still start 10x faster than what Canonical has pushed out. Probably just a lot of bad code in there.

[andre30correia]

it's slow, no so slow at least in my machine but it's dead no new features since 2013, ubuntu will replace with new software center already in use with phones. gnome applications look good but synaptic is my choice

[d2kx]

It's dead and will get replaced with the new Click-Package/whatever Store soon on Ubuntu.

The only "store" that I think is really cool so far is the new GNOME Software, as used by recent Fedora releases. It actually looks great, is easy to use and allows the installation of apps with all the relevant informations you would expect, without throwing packaging names at you and other confusing bullshit. I like my apt-get, but at least this one actually works really well. The Ubuntu Software Center is a trainwreck and hasn't seen active development in quite some time.