SoftwareCenter

Revision 4 as of 2005-10-06 19:41:30

Clear message

Summary

Rationale

  • "How do I install programs?" is one of the most common questions on the Ubuntu forums. 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 confusing and redundant.

  • Having an integrated, gorgeous tool for installing and uninstalling packages and installing security updates, and having it before any other distro does, will give Ubuntu a usability advantage for the next few months. (Merging the three tools should also result in more space available on the CD.)
  • "Synaptic" was an unfortunately obscure name anyway, and "gnome-app-install" is misleading when installing non-Gnome apps.

Use cases

  • Sam works at a company where he is not a sysadmin. He still wants to be able to see which packages are installed on his machine, and where their files are.

Scope

  • Screenshots of available packages?

  • AutoPackage integration?

Design

  • Dynamically filtered view of programs or packages: 

    Show: [programs you can install :^]         Search: [______________]
  • Menu choices are:
    • programs you can install (default when invoked manually)
    • programs already installed
    • packages available
    • packages installed
    • security updates (search field replaced by "Updates available" text)
    • all updates
  • 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.

Implementation

Code

Data preservation and migration

Outstanding issues

BoF agenda and discussion