Ubuntu Wiki

• Launchpad entry: https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+spec/software-manager

• Created: Date(2005-08-29T20:24:16Z) by MatthewPaulThomas

• Contributors: MatthewPaulThomas

• Interested: JorgeBernal RobertStoffers

• Packages affected: gnome-app-install, synaptic, update-manager

• Related: SystemUpgradeTool, AutomaticUpgrade, ThirdPartyApt

Summary

The Software Manager will bring some sanity and simplicity to software management in Ubuntu. A single graphical tool for package management, combining the power of Synaptic, the human-readable approach of Add/Remove Programs, and the ease of use of the Update Manager.

Rationale

In Ubuntu you can use gnome-app-install or synaptic for installing and uninstalling programs that have a .desktop file, synaptic for installing and uninstalling programs that don't, and update-manager or synaptic for installing updates.

This is comically redundant, especially since (a) gnome-app-install does not include programs that don't have a .desktop file (of which there are many), (b) gnome-app-install tells you in the initial screen to use Synaptic "for more complicated needs", (c) update-manager instructs you to run synaptic if it encounters conflicts, and (d) it's hard to follow this advice because only one of the three tools can be run at once. Furthermore, "Synaptic" is a non-sequitur name, and gnome-app-install is misleading since it lets you install non-Gnome apps.

Developing one simple, integrated, gorgeous tool for installing and uninstalling packages and installing security updates, will let us solve all these problems at once. (Merging the three previous tools should also be a small space saving on the Ubuntu CD.)

Use cases

• Joel wants to install Skype. He goes to [http://skype.com/ skype.com], downloads the .deb package (for "Xandros, MEPIS, Ubuntu, other Debian-based distros"), and double-clicks it. He doesn't know what a repository is.

• Sam is a college student who has recently migrated from to Windows XP to Ubuntu because he was fed up with adult sites installing spyware on his computer. The reason he had so much trouble was that though XP kept on popping up balloons in the corner of the screen to tell him about security updates, he closed them because that was the easiest thing to do. A few weeks after he installs Ubuntu, there is an important security update to Firefox 1.6.

• Ladina works as a developer at a molecular biology lab where she is not a sysadmin. She is having a bit of trouble with Biopython, and wants an easy way of seeing which version of python-biopython is installed and where its files are.

• Helen is happily using Ubuntu 6.04, when she hears from a workmate that Ubuntu 6.10 has been released. She is interested in upgrading, as long it's free, and as long as she can first read a summary of what's new.

Scope

• Screenshots of available packages?

Design

Invocation

• "Add/Remove Software…" is an item in the System menu. This opens Software Manager, showing "Programs available" by default.
• Every week (?) by default, Ubuntu checks for security updates. When updates are available, if you are an admin, Software Manager opens behind all other windows (so as not to steal focus) but requesting attention, showing "Security updates" by default. This handles Sam's use case; there is no balloon that can be ignored, and the easiest way to get rid of the window is to click "Install Updates".

Window layout

The Software Manager has two panes, one listing programs/packages, the other for describing the selected package. There is also a menu bar, a bar at the top containing filter/search controls, and a bar at the bottom containing summary info and an action button.

...

Menus

Braindump

• Dynamically filtered view of programs or packages:

  Show: [Programs installable    :^]    Containing: [______________]

• Menu choices are:
  • Programs available (default when invoked manually)
  • Programs already installed
  • Packages available
  • Packages installed
  • Security updates (search field replaced by "Updates available" text)
  • All updates
  • Changes to be made
• Items in the list have iconic pull-down menus that look like menus, not checkboxes.
• Recommendations and suggestions are shown as children of an item in the list (recommendations selected by default, suggestions not).
• Multi-level undo.
• Updates are aggregated by source package, with packages hidden inside an expander.

Implementation

Code

Data preservation and migration

Unresolved issues

• Screenshots?

• UserReviewsInSynaptic