Package managers & extra software

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1

Recently I felt in love with gnome-software interface, easy to use, much more friendly, intuitive, and very like as how a software manager should look like...

Even better, it supports flatkpak and "snap packages", but after to read on internet, only flatpak looks to be worth, it is something really well designed, with sandboxed applications and stuff

So I tried it with that plugin and I was able to install even more software than the ones we have (we have already 50k packages available, do we need more?), well, i did funny installing a few of them, even if i dont really need them

Also, seems like gnome-software manages easy the updates of the OS (i assume that similar as how "apug" does)

But no... this is not a good news, after to try it for a while, I found important reasons to not include it.... none of these two options!

So first, about flatpak:

eems like it is a security risk, as you can read for example here https://flatkill.org/ , it is very stupid to design a very well made framework to install applications with sandboxed environment... without forcing always to be the environment sandboxed!

This means, any author of a package that would like to introduce a malicious thing, can set his "app" to not-sandboxed mode :ohmygod: could you believe on any unknown author that publishes something? of course no... your entire personal info and data is on risk. I remember that there was a few people that started to "build windows versions" of free software with a virus intruduced on it...

"hey! how easy is to get these source code, put a virus, and include a 'windows build' for those users from windows!

anyhow, it is not a good idea to include flatpak by default, and all those other "packstuffs" are even worse aparently

what more is wrong about those "app-boxes" things? well, apart of the security problem and "you-dont-know-whats-built-inside", they takes also a lot of size, this means that an application that could need 5 MB or less, can need 50 or 100 MB from the appboxes (because includes all the needed libs inside), so there, we lost something that is very good on linux called "shared libs"

Another important thing is that if you install different software that is not designed to work on that OS, you can lead to different types of conflicts / issues in the overall integrity, you of course won't notice that by just launching and running it, but probably you could found issues latter in a deeper usage of your needed app. So its always important to stick at the specific (and stabilized too) versions for an OS, designed to work / integrate on it

What about gnome-software ?

When you try to close it, it doesn't close, it stays running on background with a "packagekitd" daemon, eating your RAM and even CPU... application should be "run until you don't need it anymore", and its not the case with it

that is, unless you close it from the left menu "exit", if you do it with the [ X ] button it stays on background

question is:

Do we want to switch to gnome-software? :news:

and:

do you know another good alternative?

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2

You mean the default thing that replaces Synaptic in Debian 10? Is nice, but in my wife's PC I installed also Synaptic because I was a little lost with tool, but for a new user is more user-friendly with packet icons, in some way it seems to follow the lines of smartphones app stores...

I'll take a look into my wife's PC, really I never go into it unless she asked me to install her something.....

NOT for me, as I said before first thing I did in her PC was to install synaptic with apt-get, because I didn't fount it in gnome-software tool LOL

Not, I'm sorry....

3

I personally don't and with most other people I point to Elive .... I explain "api", "apug" and "apse" and in general they're quite happy.
Maybe we should think about a GUI llike interface for those 3 commands?

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4

This is a very good idea, IMHO

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5

Yes.
The collection of open source sw we made in Elive.

And yes, we should go on like this.
We don't need to become another copycat of whatever

6

yeah, exactly, looks more like that

yeah but we are talking about a gui tool for novice users, apug* tools are more like for users used to use apt* tools and commandlines

in the case of "a gui for apug*" it will be the same problem, that's not userfriendly, novice users needs to install software easily, as @maxinou points it remembers more like smartphones app-stores (it even says "go shopping" lol wtf), let's say "my mother using it", she will know how to use synaptic? not at all, not also for apug* tools... but she will know how to use gnome-software

well, having "apug" in a GUI button called "upgrade system" could be good, but people just wants to install extra software, that requires search features, images, easy / intuitive gui, etc..

in fact, users' don't even need apug, apug is auto in elive from elive-upgrader :slight_smile: not even need a button for that

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7

Yeah I was actually not thinking of making a big software tool but I do notice that novice users get quite aprehensive at working in a console and entering commands. It scares the shit out of them. :clown_face:

So I was thinking along the lines of some zenity widgets showing search results etc, etc ...... hoping they will later understand how those commands work in the console.
Compare it to "gdebi-gtk"

8

Hello, Team.. got a small problem with gnome-software...
when it start from icon - it can't remove any software ( got a message :"haven't permissions")
but if i start it from terminal - sudo gnome-software - it working nice...how to change permissions correctly?

9

Actually this is something the software-manager itself should take care of i.e ask the sudo password when such an action is asked for.

Gnome-software has nice looks but is rather buggy on Elive (not sure about other Desktops) :slightly_frowning_face:

10

I think it is an issue with the policy. But I am not using GUI tools, so I am not sure how it should look like.
Take a look in /usr/share/polkit-1/actions/org.debian.apt.policy and search for something like org.debian.apt.install-file.

Or just use the hammer: sudo apt install --reinstall software-center gnome-software
This should rewrite (and therefore fix) the policy itself.

11

Hello, thank's for help - i tried reinstall -the same problem...

but how i could restart ( or reinstall) policy? could you give example?

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And it wont work either ....... it's a general misbehaviour of gnome-software.
On my machine it does the same albeit I never use it so I didn't know until now..... and I do not have a package 'software-center' installed or in my repos.