Software installation on modern Ubuntu

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

Nrbrtx wrote on 24/08/17 01:33:
>…
> As far I can understand here were two methods of software
> installation:
> 1. apt (apt-get), dpkg, aptitude - for advanced users
> 2. synaptic and Ubuntu software-center - for newbies.

Synaptic is fine for what it is, but it is not even close to being “for
newbies”. It doesn’t show the real name of any app (unless the name
happens to be mentioned in the description), it doesn’t show reviews or
recommendations, it doesn’t show screenshots until you click a “Get
Screenshot” button each time, and it prominently displays propellerhead
jargon like “multiverse”, “Mark All Upgrades”, and “Get Changelog”.

> Nowadays gnome-software and mate-welcome were added to the newbies'
> list. But they have very small lists of software.
> Ubuntu software-center was great, but its development was dropped.
> 
> What we have as result?
> 
> There is only one mature and functional software manager. It is named
> *Synaptic*. But ... it works very strange. I talk about Ubuntu 16.04.3
> LTS (!) here. I do not know why you migrated apt-xapian-index to
> Python3. This migration is incomplete and buggy (see bug 1612948

apt-xapian-index was ported to Python 3 because it was one of the tasks
necessary for porting Unity to Python 3.
<https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Python/FoundationsXPythonVersions#apt-xapian-index>

It was also one of the tasks necessary for porting Ubuntu Software
Center to Python 3. Unfortunately other parts of that project were not
completed.

-- 
mpt