Ubuntu Software Center future

[David Raphaël]

Hi Martin,
Thank you for your answer.
I really like your idea of showing only the .desktop in the scope and the rest with synaptic. A return of synaptic as the default package management tool would make a lot of people happy.

However, my idea was a little different. As I said, I don't know exactly what Canonical is planning. But I assume that they want to have a software center like the App Store of Apple. This could result in non-free apps (which is already the case with the actual software center). Thus, those apps cannot be placed on the same repository as the original Ubuntu packages. So for me, the separation already exists and is not arbitrary at all. On one side we have the apps made with the Ubuntu sdk (canonical-related with free and paying apps) with the Ubuntu Software Center and on the other side we have the standard packages (apt-get) with Synaptic.

I know that a lot of people are avoiding Ubuntu due to the fact that the boundary between commercial and free software is not clearly determined. With my solution, I think the distinction would be clear enough for those people to come back.

Raphaël
________________________________
De : Martin Albisetti [argentina at gmail.com]
Envoyé : dimanche 28 septembre 2014 21:25
À : David Raphaël
Cc : Ubuntu Devel Discuss
Objet : Re: Ubuntu Software Center future



On Sep 28, 2014 8:12 AM, "David Raphaël" <raphael.david at epfl.ch<mailto:raphael.david at epfl.ch>> wrote:
>
> Hi everyone!
> With the recent development of Unity8, I have noticed that the Ubuntu Software Center is becoming an App Store equivalent, which I think is fine. For me, the Ubuntu Software Center should focus on applications and not on packages.
>
> However, I am a bit concerned about package management and I think that Ubuntu should develop (or improve) its own package management system in order for the distribution to be more administrators friendly. I know there already exist synaptic or aptitude, but those are not included by default in the distribution and I read somewhere that Canonical wanted only one tool by default.
>
> What about having two main sections in the Ubuntu Software Center: one for the applications (related to apps.ubuntu.com<http://apps.ubuntu.com> with icons, screenshots as well as users comments for each entry) and one for the packages (related to packages.ubuntu.com<http://packages.ubuntu.com> with a simple but powerful presentation like synaptic)?
>
> I do not really know what are the actual plans of Canonical but I really think splitting the business part (applications) from the traditional open source part (packages) would remove any ambiguity and be profitable for everyone. The actual Ubuntu Software Center is trying to be in the middle of those two approaches, which results in a messy software (in my opinion).

I don't think there's a plan set in stone yet. I expect us to iterate over this issue in the next cycles and vUDS.
The software store as such, is a scope in Unity8, which means we won't use anything from the current Software Center code. The scope is fully functional on the phone and as we converge desktops running Unity8 will get it with little effort.
I think I agree with your general approach on splitting it out, we'd have to think about the user experience a bit so that it doesn't make people feel they need to go to 2 different places to install applications. The new store is based on click packages, so I expect us to have to pull apps from 2 different places for a while.
We could show in the app scope anything that is either a click or has a .desktop file, for example, and the rest of the packages with no UI in synaptic.

I'm not sure if this is what you're proposing, or if you want to separate apps submitted directly to the software store separate from apps that have been packaged into debs. If so, I don't think that'll work well as the distinction is only clear to distro developers, it'll seem like an arbitrary separation to anyone else.

I'd certainly like us to start fleshing the plan out.

--
Martin
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