Canonical seemingly begins process to replace their current Gnome Software based store with the new community-made flutter store
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zeanox
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My experience with gnome-software has been pretty bad (on Fedora) as long as I've been using it. Every time you press refresh, the store gets stuck on loading.
Sometimes searching stuff doesn't provide any results as it doesn't fetch them or the program stucks on load once again.
The good things are that I've found many apps that I wouldn't have otherwise. Since if you want to install software from terminal, you kinda have to know it beforehand. It's fun to scroll through the catalogs few times a year when bored
jorgesgk
Agreed. The backend is pretty bad. I find the UI delightfully simple and straightforward though.
tapo
Backend is PackageKit, and I don't know anyone who's had a good experience with it.
LvS
The problem with PackageKit is that it tries to be an abstraction for all the different packaging systems, so that it works with debs (on Ubuntu and Debian and all their versions) and rpms (with zypper and dnf and yum and) and all the other insane packaging systems. Oh and Arch btw.
So obviously you end up with a huge mess that never works quite the way you'd expect from your distro's packaging system.
lavadrop5
I had endless issues due to PackageKit on OpenSUSE.
I asked on the forums and they all told me to lock/mask PackageKit and forget about it
[deleted]
Can confirm, Discover is painful on Fedora KDE... and that also uses PackageKit.
That said, on KDE Neon, PackageKit/Discover actually seemed to work pretty well together. At least in the Fedora case, I think PackageKit just has serious problems with dnf/yum/rpms.
doenietzomoeilijk
Can confirm, Discover is painful on Fedora KDE...
It's not much better on OpenSUSE, I just install software from the cli since Discover is just horridly slow for me.
jorgesgk
[deleted]
What's the root cause of gnome-software's bugginess? Is it overengineered? Or is its scope too ambitious?
PossiblyLinux127
Its the backend packagekit. It does not handle rpm's very well
[deleted]
I can relate to it but it kind of depends. For instance, evince has been pretty good; simple-scan, while a bit annoying, also worked ok-ish. My bigger problem with GNOME3 is the "we control what you use" attitude by gnome-devs. I can not use that shell-centric, drag-and-drop-with-finger centric UI of GNOME3 at all on a desktop system.
Unicorn_Colombo
gnome software is fine, you are just using it wrong.
-- Gnome Dev
(this is a joke)
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NateNate60
Personally, my opinion on the project is positive, but I'm concerned about the lack of Flatpak support. Currently, plans to add Flatpak support to it are in the "discussion" phase, but I would really not find it usable for me until it's implemented. An issue has already been opened on their repository for this.
It's true that Flatpak doesn't come by default on Ubuntu, but most other Linux distributions will have it and the winds seem to be blowing in the direction of Flatpak over Snap for the foreseeable future. I understand that the project is mainly designed with Ubuntu in mind, but the fact that other distributions (or potentially even GNOME itself) might adopt this store should nonetheless be at least a consideration in development.
jorgesgk
It's better than what we already have.
Snaps are fine, and I don't believe they'll disappear as they hold clear advantages. Having said that, I do hope it supports flatpaks too, in the form of plugin at least, just like Gnome Software does.
NateNate60
I do think it's better than Snap Store, but I don't think it'll be better than GNOME Software until a Flatpak extension is made.
jbicha
The current Snap Store doesn't support Flatpak either.
The GNOME Software app will still be available for install if you want Flatpak support.
tapo
This is kind of silly. With the popularity of the Steam Deck a lot of first time Linux users are exclusively relying on Flatpaks, which makes it a great distribution model for everything but Ubuntu.
mrlinkwii
With the popularity of the Steam Deck a lot of first time Linux users are exclusively relying on Flatpaks
i mean good for them? ubuntu isnt obligated to use flatpak
jorgesgk
They aren't obliged and we are permitted to suggest and voice our requests for Ubuntu to better support Flatpaks.
You see? Freedom works both ways. You cannot shut down a discussion on the basis of freedom
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deidyomega
supporting other package formats isn't a conflict of interest.
Rhed0x
The design reminds me a lot of the Microsoft store in Windows 11.
Pitiful-Reserve-8075
Will it just be a coincidence?
NaheemSays
About time - afaik their snap store is based on around a 3 year old version of gnome-software.
a1b4fd
Not anymore. They promoted a newer version to stable recently
jorgesgk
They could've implemented flatpak support...
a1b4fd
The current one sucks so much I doubt they have resources or even care at all
[deleted]
Not disagreeing but rewriting in Flutter/Dart means to join Google.
The cited stability claim aka "we had to rewrite in flutter because the older software was magically filled with numerous bugs" is bogus really. The linux kernel is quite stable (more or less). The language used isn't primarily the reason why software is good or bad (for the most part).
mgedmin
The flatpak plugin was deliberately excluded from ubuntu snap-store builds, with the official response to apt install gnome-software if you want flatpak support. (And then you have two software stores, with the same program name but different icons, one of which doesn't support snaps, and one which doesn't support flatpaks.)
jorgesgk
End result? I remove the snap store and use the Gnome Software for everything as it supports the three different packages
NateNate60
The only logical reason for it I can see is to frustrate users from using Flatpak while making Snap comparably more accessible. There is no other benefit provided by Snap Store over GNOME Software.
jorgesgk
Considering Fedora does the same but the other way around, I'd attribute it to stupidity rather than to malice. Also, Canonical maintains officially also the flatpak package, Gnome software and the flatpak plugin.
jbicha
The Snap Store is a Snap. For it to support Flatpak, I think the Snap system would need to create an interface for Flatpak. Possibly even Flatpak itself being a Snap. I think both of these outcomes are surprising and demonstrate that this is something that requires a significant amount of work.
NateNate60
Snaps can already run with only limited confinement in Classic mode, and can run completely unconfined in dev mode. It's really just a matter of making the Snap Store unconfined by default, and then scouting for potential security problems, which is unlikely since the Snap Store is really just GNOME Software, which runs unconfined as a native package on most GNOME-using distros.
orgasmicfart69
I will give it a go.
I'm not sure gnome store is what I have on Zorin 15 and 16 but it is amazingly bad.
- Search doesn't go, and then when you try for the third time it searches what you were searching the first time.
- When you get an error you get a brief fading message with an enormous text that you can't copy and understand most of the time. It is a screenshot race.
- I made a fresh new install a month ago and still nothing outside the front page loads properly.
grady_vuckovic
Looks really nice, going by their github goals list it will have built in permission management? Very nice, I like it!
varangian
Is this why (on Ubuntu 20.04) I'm getting irritating pop-up messages saying that the snap-store will be updated in X days (currently 10) and I should stop the process or is that some other shenanigans?
jorgesgk
Oh, no. That's due to a (very badly implemented) snap update notification.
varangian
Hmm, having been agnostic on the whole snap vs flatpak vs deb issue I'm beginning to see why some people aren't big fans of snap. It's pretty ridiculous that an app can't update itself without the user having to intervene. Even more stupid that it nags the user more than a week in advance of anything happening without providing any useful information as to what needs to be done or even what it's talking about. It was only after doing a bit of searching after seeing the message that I learnt that it was the Ubuntu Software store it was on about.
jorgesgk
That's not an issue of the snap format itself, but of the daemon it uses. It could be easily fixed (and probably will)
varangian
Hope so. I'll be trying out 22.04 sooner or later and I believe that has even more snap stuff in it, much as I've liked using Ubuntu over the last decade or so a few things have appeared in it that have caused my loyalty to waver.
mrlinkwii
Hope so. I'll be trying out 22.04 sooner or later and I believe that has even more snap stuff in it,
it has the same amount of snap stuff , the main difference firefox is default snap , thats about it
NateNate60
Having Firefox installed as a Snap package has been the largest pain in the ass Ubuntu has ever given me. The Snap package takes too long to start up the first time after turning on the computer and it doesn't interact well with the rest of the system due to sandboxing. To be fair, the same would also be true with Flatpak, which is why I wanted to install the native package. Well, Ubuntu removed the .deb package from the default repositories, and if you try to apt install firefox, it downloads a dummy package which installs the Snap version and copies the configuration files over.
So the solution of course is to install Firefox from Mozilla's PPA. But that has problems too. Mainly, the dummy Snap package seems to hold a higher version number than the PPA package, so whenever an update comes, it "upgrades" to the dummy package and replaces it with the Snap. I can set the priority of the PPA to whatever I want, but it will still upgrade to the Snap. The only way I found to prevent this is to apt hold it.
Jesus Christ.
mrlinkwii
ell, Ubuntu removed the .deb package from the default repositories, and if you try to apt install firefox, it downloads a dummy package which installs the Snap version and copies the configuration files over.
mozilla asked them to
NateNate60
The result is nonetheless still frustrating
mgedmin
No, what you're seeing is https://bugs.launchpad.net/snap-store-desktop/+bug/1903977
Surfacechromium2007
Finally, a store that actually doesn't suck
jorgesgk
About time...
For me, it didn't make any sense to ship a modified version of Gnome Software with functionality taken away (the flatpak plugin).
They claim they just were based on an old version of Gnome Software, but honestly, I feel like it was relatively kept up to date with the upstream.
If you're gonna build a snap store without flatpaks, build a new thing, but don't go around taking a more complete project and skimming it down.
This I say as a happy user of Ubuntu in some of my computers and with no hate to Canonical whatsoever. Snaps are not bad either BTW, but just putting barriers for competing technologies (even if you also support and package Gnome Software and flatpak) seems stupid and unnecessary. This I like though.
jbicha
Most distros providing the GNOME Software app also strip it down and don't enable the Snap support.
jorgesgk
I agree, and many don't support Flatpaks by default either (Debian or OpenSuse come to my mind) and don't get as much hate as Ubuntu does. However, Ubuntu is in a whole different league, and there are differences between not supporting something and stripping it out of the upstream, which is what Canonical did.
Plus, snaps are nice too, but let's be honest, Flatpaks are winning, and that doesn't seem to change anytime soon.
jbicha
It's been a while since I looked but Debian might be the only distro besides Ubuntu where you can install Snaps from the GNOME Software app if you install the right plugin. Please complain to all the other distros about how they are stripping it out of upstream.
Similarly, the Applications panel in the GNOME Settings app allows configuring permissions for Snap apps. It doesn't depend on snapd; just the minimal snapd-glib library. I believe only Debian and Ubuntu enable that feature. In contrast, the Flatpak integration is enabled on every distro.
Ubuntu has been as open (perhaps more so) to support Flatpak as other distros are to support Snap.
jorgesgk
I was about to prove you wrong...
Until I checked on my Fedora install and found out that you're absolutely right. I'm really surprised and disappointed. I swear I thought Fedora had a nice snap integration.
jbicha
I understand not installing snapd by default. Debian doesn't do it either. But those 2 small changes would be a nice show of goodwill.
Conan_Kudo
We used to ship it, but the GNOME Software maintainer at the time unilaterally disabled it over my objections. I'd love to have it back, but it's not my call.
We still ship the snap plugin for Plasma Discover.
mrlinkwii
Plus, snaps are nice too, but let's be honest, Flatpaks are winning, and that doesn't seem to change anytime soon.
not really , server side snap is winning , user side subject to distro flatpak isn't winning
happymellon
Docker/K8s is by far and away winning server side.
No one is seriously using Snap server side.
AaronTechnic
Damn, that looks so good! Like, so fricking good! I hope the new update panel replaces the old software updater (hopefully they get it right like fedora) and the new deb package tab replaces Synaptic due to it showing all packages.
MoistyWiener
Hopefully they add Flatpak support by then. It's there most requested feature for the project!
nnenneplex
> The general consensus is that this new store, even it its alpha state, is more responsive, less buggy, and more intuitive than the current store.
Well, you set the bar high.
Void4GamesYT
Yes YES Yes YES
YES!!!!!!!!
[deleted]
Next thing: Ubuntu will replace gnome with a rewrite of unity using flutter
feenaHo
Looks way better than the old one. Hope it performs better too.
FengLengshun
Huh, looks pretty cool. It looks really similar to Deepin and Endless OS store though. I mean, there's only so many way of making an app store that's sensible I guess, but I was expecting it to be more similar to gnome-software, you know, "New shit, same as old one."
solidnoctis
Definitely much better than the actual Gnome-software. Installed.
amarao_san
I reject Canonical attempt to become 'the marketplace'. It's so windows/android way, that if I ever start to like it, I'm better to switch to Windows/Android.
For Gnu/Linux I expect to have user freedom respected, an the community build around shared values, not 'application sandbox isolation by tools of marketplace owner'.
AaronTechnic
what?
amarao_san
I'm saying that I don't like what Ubuntu is doing with snaps, and currently prepare means of moving to Debian for the projects I'm working with.
mrlinkwii
i mean flathub is no better in attempting to become 'the marketplace' their lauching user profiles, purchasable apps etc
amarao_san
Yep. But Debian is stay off 'flathub' and whilst I somewhat scary of 'how Debian packages are build', I really appreciate the result.
I trust my video editor not to stole my data, and I don't need to to protect my system from it.
Than, suddenly, there is a trashcan of 'something' running without trust we need to protect system from. Why should we switch trusted collection of fast-working applications for untrusted slow pile of sandboxes?
AaronTechnic
Flathub and Snap are open source.
amarao_san
Where can I get snap server source code (snapcraft server).
In Debian terms this make snapd into contrib at best, not into free section.
AaronTechnic
Fair, the snap store server code isn't OSS, and this is because of canonical learning from what happened with Launchpad.
Besides, you can open your own snap store.
amarao_san
Or I can write my own AppStore and iOS. Fair enough, I can. Theoretically.
[deleted]
Snap is but also isn't. It's like saying android is open source. It is but you can't have a 100% open-source Android build
mrlinkwii
Snap is but also isn't.
it is
The Snap Store is run and controlled by Canonical and is not open source. The rest of Snap is open source, meaning the daemon and core software.
AaronTechnic
Only the snap store is closed source. This isn't stored on your computer.
[deleted]
So whatever is stored on my computer is closed source? What the
AaronTechnic
Oh no i messed up my comment
Pitiful-Reserve-8075
Maximum respect.
Pitiful-Reserve-8075
I agree. It's a matter of principles. But we know that that will not be respected in some communities.
Drwankingstein
Canonical is doing something good for once? that's nice flutter is a very nice framework,.
The new store looks great