> Then what about gnome-software? I see that gnome-software has least > issues to fix. Just disable snap integration and fix certain > GTK-related issues. (Maybe a few more works need to be done, such as > removing any ambiguous "free" in the license areas.) Generally, > purifying gnome-software seems easier than keeping gnome-app-install > up to date.
Snap integration is a separate plugin in 18.04, so it should be easy to disable. The client-side decoration issue is a cosmetic one, and is really a problem with Trisquel's GTK3 theme, not gnome-software. Out of all the possible gnome-app-install replacements, gnome-software is the least-worst option. However, I would prefer to avoid it if possible for two reasons: (1) It is a buggy piece of crap. On every distro I have tried it on (Trisquel, Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora), I have run into serious problems. The most common issue is it not being able to find any applications except for applications that are already installed, and Snap packages (if the Snap plugin is enabled). gnome-app-install has its application data computed in advance and installed as a package, so there is no risk of this happening. The fact that gnome-software's data is computed dynamically on the user's end has the advantage of being able to recognize software from PPAs (when it works at all), but the fact that gnome-app-install's data is computed in advance gives it the advantage that it actually f*cking works out-of-the box reliably. (2) It prioritizes being fancy and Apple-like over being useful. From the "Let's go shopping" message on startup (Trisquel users are not "shopping" for products, but are installing free software from their distro's repository) to the App-Store-like organization of information, gnome-software treats its users like customers to be sold to. gnome-app-install is simple and transparent: If you know what you want to install, just type the name, no need to click around and look at billboards. If you don't know exactly what you want to install, filter by category or keywords for what you're looking for and see what packages matching those tags are actually most used by other users in practice, instead of what some gatekeeper has been bribed to promote. If gnome-app-install doesn't work out, gnome-software is plan B, but we would just fix the freedom issues. It would be too much work to make it be not crap.
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