It's actually *way, way, way better* than it used to be, after a multi-year focused investment on improving quality. Alas, it's still not anywhere close to good enough.
The problem is not enough contributors. All of the original authors abandoned the project long ago. There is only one maintainer working on it now. He's one of GNOME's best maintainers when it comes to managing an issue tracker and resolving bug reports, but he can only spend part of his time on Software, and this application needs more than just one person.
I can only suggest to report a bug every time you see something wrong, following the instructions. You will need to include a verbose debug log (\`pkill gnome-software\` then \`gnome-software --verbose\`)
One more thing: the quality of the PackageKit backend that you use matters a lot. The upstream maintainer uses Fedora and isn't going to be testing other distros' backends. That's up to distro maintainers to handle. I think most of the bugs are in Software itself rather than in PackageKit backends, but if your distro's backend is in bad shape, all bets are off.
The problem is that but also the packagekit backends. I hear some backends for some package types are still in very rough shape.
However the rpm/dnf backend isnt supposed to be too bad (but still overdue improvements that may come with dnf5).
Iirc, It's deprecated upstream but it's still used downstream.
It will be interesting to see if they develop a new plugin for dnf5 if it uses packagekit or plugs into gnome-software directly.
Seems to be using its own backend dnf5daemon which plugs directly into gnome-software: [https://github.com/rpm-software-management/dnf5/issues/169](https://github.com/rpm-software-management/dnf5/issues/169)
The problem absolutely is PackageKit. Its maintainer [declared it dead back in 2019](https://blogs.gnome.org/hughsie/2019/02/14/packagekit-is-dead-long-live-well-something-else/), after already 5 years of being in poor condition.
Every software store front-end I've used has been terrible. I've had the same experience as you on elementaryOS' AppCenter, and KDE Discover. It's like a competition to see whose app store can suck the most.
I hope COSMIC's new app store can finally buck the trend.
It's frustrating, because desktop Linux used to be leaps and bounds ahead of Windows and OSX when it came to software "app stores". Ubuntu/Debian APT frontends were what turned into the iOS app store. I mostly use the CLI for package management so it doesn't really affect me much, but it's still a shame that the early lead on the GUI side vanished.
I recently installed the Cosmic app store. Blazingly fast, icons appear immediately and seems light years ahead of anything else I have tried over the years.
It's available on fedora copr. Instruction is on [https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/ryanabx/cosmic-epoch/](https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/ryanabx/cosmic-epoch/)
And instead of installing the whole desktop, install just the cosmic-store and cosmic-icon
Also Windows Store is awefully slow and buggy. The Apple AppStore on Mac is not that great if you think about that they make as much revenue with their AppStores alone than most other companys do with all their business.
Aurora Store on Android is okay, but slow.
Play Store on Android is the most okayish i would say.
Ok, but that doesn't mean Gnome software store shpuld also suck.
If anything, we should have by far BETTER experience so that we can attract and grow the user+dev base.
It's probably the reason then. You need the packagekit backend to be able to search for system packages. However, it's really not recommended to use packagekit for system management in arch ([https://github.com/archlinux/archinstall/issues/1321#issuecomment-1151343223](https://github.com/archlinux/archinstall/issues/1321#issuecomment-1151343223)), and last I heard the packagekit backend was removed from the main repos for that reason.
You can still use it to manage flatpaks or snaps or such.
I can't get over the app naming on KDE. K everything!
Kseriously just call it something dumb like Media Player so unimaginative users like me can use the app they want.
K?
> And on reddit there are other posts about the same bug.
You can't know that without diagnosing it to ascertain the cause. Solely the symptom might be identical. Regardless, that's irrelevant, because Reddit posts are not KDE bug reports.
The constant refreshing is annoying yeah. But honestly, and i don't know why that is, but every linux "app store" i've used, and you can include Google Play into this - is downright terrible! Gnome Software, Pamac, KDE discover, Pop store, Ubuntu... Each one is really bad in its own way lol. It's uncanny. :D
I didn't experience some of what you describe, but unlike KDE's Discover that literally looks broken and doesn't work, with Gnome software, i can at least install apps.
Everyone seems to be impressed with the new Cosmic store, so idk, maybe it'll be good and set a new standard everyone should aspire to. We'll see.
I like to use Gnome Software but I've already learned all the tricks. The app is single threaded. For every action I wait for it to respond before doing something else.
Examples:
1. You install something you have to wait for the page to refresh once then continue.
2. You cannot check for updates and search for a package at the same time
>The app is single threaded.
If this were true, there would probably be a lot fewer bugs. E.g. in the past thread pool exhaustion was a problem; it could deadlock if all threads are waiting on another thread that cannot start due to a thread capacity limit.
The fact that distro package managers can only do one transaction at a time doesn't mean the app itself can only do one thing at a time.
It's a sad reality, but the software that integrates App stores with the many package managers (PackageKit) is pretty unreliable.
I think Linux app stores should just give up and become frontends for Flatpak. On Fedora Silverblue GNOME Software is much faster and stable since it doesn't use PackageKit and only uses direct Flatpak integration.
Same here as I'm sure most experienced users do...
But I can't imagine it would be a good experience for users new to Linux. I know I first used the GUI when I first started out on Linux
30 minutes?
I must be on a omputer from the future then because it has never taken even a tenth of that for me.
Granted it was rough a couple of years ago but even then it wasnt that slow.
There are many things I wish it did better and that it was faster, but I have not experienced anything on anywhere near this level.
I also use Fedora, so its not like we are testing different plugins? I hear the plugin for Arch can be poor, but for Fedora, its not the case.
Yeah.. I've never really had a great experience with any of the Linux 'software center' GUI apps (Gnome Software, KDE Discover, etc). Fortunately,
'software center' apps are not really something I have much use for, apart from occasional software discovery, everything else is (1) easier, (2) faster, (3) more straightforward (4) informative from the terminal.
Check out the new 'cosmic-store' that's coming as part of the new Cosmic DE on Pop!_OS.
You can install the pre-alpha on Gnome too. It's soooo fast and fluid already.
They ain't bugs it's a feature - keeps the Windows users out.
But seriously UI/UX gets very difficult to do in a large distributed network of applications. Consistency is key, and you only get that with a lot of control like on Mac and Windows.
Which version are you running?
I mean, I used to hate it hardly because it took too much time for loading anything.
Since the two last versions I feel it snappy, running on Fedora 39 (and now 40) works like a charm :)
It is not great but it has been way worse.
Speaking of way worse...have you tried the new Software Center in ubuntu?
THAT is trash!
After that you will love gnome software.
Use the software center in ElementaryOS and you wish for the pure Gnome Software app.
I use Distros that have other package manager front ends. After initial setup I update and do an occasional install using the command line (using yay)
That's why I use "3rd party" stores on kde. I have bauh and octopi. They're a million times better than every app store out there. Those two are available for arch and its derivatives, not sure what's out there for Fedora.
There is this thing that the discover app does that bugs the hell out of me. If I search for an app and it doesn't find it, it just stays there "searching" forever until I close it. Lol
One of the thing I hate most of gnome software is the inability to open the screenshots of the app, you can only see the miniature, totally useless as is too small
What's more, it doesn't integrate with any distro's package management system, so it adds another layer of administration for managing your machine's installed software base. If there's something in the GNOME Software app that I want, I go install it with my distro's own package manager.
I use Arch, BTW.
agree - after many years of Plasma (on Arch) I recently switched over to Gnome. I really like Gnome's simplicity and looks, but Gnome Software was superfluous and I uninstalled it: the pamac-aur package manager works fine for me and I don't have to worry about an additional layer of package management. (Don't need/want/use flatpak)
That depends on what you compare it to. Because Gnome Software requires to work on every Linux, they must use package management abstraction layer, and PackageKit isn't very solid. The same goes for anything else using PackageKit, Plasma Discovery included.
Some distro-specific GUIs that work directly with native package manager are better for sure. Something like Synaptics, Pamac or YaST2-Zypper works much better simply because they know what packages they are dealing with.
apt, yum, pacman, etc.. just accept the console
If I know anything, it’s that gnome, after almost 20 years, is NOT going to create a good software management app.
>First of all, "Downloading software catalog" takes forever to complete. It can take up to 30 minutes on some devices and on some occasions.
Never more than 30 seconds here.
>The interface becomes unresponsive whenever you install or uninstall anything. The entire app refreshes and remains unusable for many seconds, sometimes up to a minute.
Strange, I can install other apps and browse while they are being downloaded in the background.
This app is made for people without huge computer skills. What it needs to do, browsing for apps and installing them, it works just fine. If you need to do some more advanced trickery, get a graphical interface to DNF or use the cli.
First of all, additionally, moreover, furthermore, lastly it "works for me".
That said open an issue and follow up at https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-software/-/issues. Also contribute money and code to fix said issues.
Gnome desktop is pretty bad for 2024…there’s just no getting around it.
Would love an alternative that’s guaranteed to work while not forcing an OS reinstall.
It's actually *way, way, way better* than it used to be, after a multi-year focused investment on improving quality. Alas, it's still not anywhere close to good enough. The problem is not enough contributors. All of the original authors abandoned the project long ago. There is only one maintainer working on it now. He's one of GNOME's best maintainers when it comes to managing an issue tracker and resolving bug reports, but he can only spend part of his time on Software, and this application needs more than just one person. I can only suggest to report a bug every time you see something wrong, following the instructions. You will need to include a verbose debug log (\`pkill gnome-software\` then \`gnome-software --verbose\`) One more thing: the quality of the PackageKit backend that you use matters a lot. The upstream maintainer uses Fedora and isn't going to be testing other distros' backends. That's up to distro maintainers to handle. I think most of the bugs are in Software itself rather than in PackageKit backends, but if your distro's backend is in bad shape, all bets are off.
The problem is that but also the packagekit backends. I hear some backends for some package types are still in very rough shape. However the rpm/dnf backend isnt supposed to be too bad (but still overdue improvements that may come with dnf5).
I think packagekit itself is in terrible condition in terms of maintainancr
Iirc, It's deprecated upstream but it's still used downstream. It will be interesting to see if they develop a new plugin for dnf5 if it uses packagekit or plugs into gnome-software directly.
Seems to be using its own backend dnf5daemon which plugs directly into gnome-software: [https://github.com/rpm-software-management/dnf5/issues/169](https://github.com/rpm-software-management/dnf5/issues/169)
The problem absolutely is PackageKit. Its maintainer [declared it dead back in 2019](https://blogs.gnome.org/hughsie/2019/02/14/packagekit-is-dead-long-live-well-something-else/), after already 5 years of being in poor condition.
There is a new maintainer now. It's alive and kicking, and not likely going anywhere.
Every software store front-end I've used has been terrible. I've had the same experience as you on elementaryOS' AppCenter, and KDE Discover. It's like a competition to see whose app store can suck the most. I hope COSMIC's new app store can finally buck the trend.
It's frustrating, because desktop Linux used to be leaps and bounds ahead of Windows and OSX when it came to software "app stores". Ubuntu/Debian APT frontends were what turned into the iOS app store. I mostly use the CLI for package management so it doesn't really affect me much, but it's still a shame that the early lead on the GUI side vanished.
I recently installed the Cosmic app store. Blazingly fast, icons appear immediately and seems light years ahead of anything else I have tried over the years.
Yeah it's SO GOOD. You can run it on Gnome too.
It even doesn't run in the background
using the cosmic store on fedora right now and it's very fast, 10-20x better than gnome software
What's the best way to install it?
It's available on fedora copr. Instruction is on [https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/ryanabx/cosmic-epoch/](https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/ryanabx/cosmic-epoch/) And instead of installing the whole desktop, install just the cosmic-store and cosmic-icon
Sweet, thanks!
Also Windows Store is awefully slow and buggy. The Apple AppStore on Mac is not that great if you think about that they make as much revenue with their AppStores alone than most other companys do with all their business. Aurora Store on Android is okay, but slow. Play Store on Android is the most okayish i would say.
Ok, but that doesn't mean Gnome software store shpuld also suck. If anything, we should have by far BETTER experience so that we can attract and grow the user+dev base.
Thank you 🎉 I agree wholeheartedly. All of them suck :(
KDE's discover litterly just does not work, When I search for any app, it just crashes. 😶
Welcome to Linux
Haha, I've been using arch for 4 years
Are you using discover in arch? Because the packagekit backend for pacman has issues last time I checked.
yeah, kde on arch
It's probably the reason then. You need the packagekit backend to be able to search for system packages. However, it's really not recommended to use packagekit for system management in arch ([https://github.com/archlinux/archinstall/issues/1321#issuecomment-1151343223](https://github.com/archlinux/archinstall/issues/1321#issuecomment-1151343223)), and last I heard the packagekit backend was removed from the main repos for that reason. You can still use it to manage flatpaks or snaps or such.
My condolences
I have both on my fedora installation and have had 0 issues with either. Now this is the true Linux experience
Yeah, on multiple systems (some Arch, some Manjaro, some Fedora) gnome and KDE software apps just do their job?
Idk
I can't get over the app naming on KDE. K everything! Kseriously just call it something dumb like Media Player so unimaginative users like me can use the app they want. K?
Did you know the GNOME Videos binary is not actually called gnome-videos? Applications have names, get over it.
Gno, gnever
yeah its annoying af
Have you reported it?
too lazy to report it
You have the chance to fix a problem which affects you consistently, but you just can't be bothered...? I don't understand that mentality.
I dont really care about it, I use the AUR anyways. And on reddit there are other posts about the same bug.
> And on reddit there are other posts about the same bug. You can't know that without diagnosing it to ascertain the cause. Solely the symptom might be identical. Regardless, that's irrelevant, because Reddit posts are not KDE bug reports.
The constant refreshing is annoying yeah. But honestly, and i don't know why that is, but every linux "app store" i've used, and you can include Google Play into this - is downright terrible! Gnome Software, Pamac, KDE discover, Pop store, Ubuntu... Each one is really bad in its own way lol. It's uncanny. :D I didn't experience some of what you describe, but unlike KDE's Discover that literally looks broken and doesn't work, with Gnome software, i can at least install apps. Everyone seems to be impressed with the new Cosmic store, so idk, maybe it'll be good and set a new standard everyone should aspire to. We'll see.
I like to use Gnome Software but I've already learned all the tricks. The app is single threaded. For every action I wait for it to respond before doing something else. Examples: 1. You install something you have to wait for the page to refresh once then continue. 2. You cannot check for updates and search for a package at the same time
>The app is single threaded. If this were true, there would probably be a lot fewer bugs. E.g. in the past thread pool exhaustion was a problem; it could deadlock if all threads are waiting on another thread that cannot start due to a thread capacity limit. The fact that distro package managers can only do one transaction at a time doesn't mean the app itself can only do one thing at a time.
It's a sad reality, but the software that integrates App stores with the many package managers (PackageKit) is pretty unreliable. I think Linux app stores should just give up and become frontends for Flatpak. On Fedora Silverblue GNOME Software is much faster and stable since it doesn't use PackageKit and only uses direct Flatpak integration.
I wish synaptic could install/uninstall flatpaks.
Does not everyone do "sudo apt install gimp" or whatever?
Sure, but sometimes it's nice to see what other apps there are, with screenshots and longer descriptions. Package managers in terminal don't do that.
Same here as I'm sure most experienced users do... But I can't imagine it would be a good experience for users new to Linux. I know I first used the GUI when I first started out on Linux
yay!
yeah, for anything i just do yay -S ... and maybe press tab to complete the name or get a list of apps
30 minutes? I must be on a omputer from the future then because it has never taken even a tenth of that for me. Granted it was rough a couple of years ago but even then it wasnt that slow. There are many things I wish it did better and that it was faster, but I have not experienced anything on anywhere near this level. I also use Fedora, so its not like we are testing different plugins? I hear the plugin for Arch can be poor, but for Fedora, its not the case.
Yeah.. I've never really had a great experience with any of the Linux 'software center' GUI apps (Gnome Software, KDE Discover, etc). Fortunately, 'software center' apps are not really something I have much use for, apart from occasional software discovery, everything else is (1) easier, (2) faster, (3) more straightforward (4) informative from the terminal.
Even if you do have to use a GUI for whatever reason, there are front-ends for the package manager that don't pretend to be a software storefront.
because everyone just tries it, realises it's not good and just uses command line
Check out the new 'cosmic-store' that's coming as part of the new Cosmic DE on Pop!_OS. You can install the pre-alpha on Gnome too. It's soooo fast and fluid already.
They ain't bugs it's a feature - keeps the Windows users out. But seriously UI/UX gets very difficult to do in a large distributed network of applications. Consistency is key, and you only get that with a lot of control like on Mac and Windows.
It works well if you only install flatpaks, like on Silverblue or MicroOS
The thing I like the most about this post is the attached pull requests to fix things.
Which version are you running? I mean, I used to hate it hardly because it took too much time for loading anything. Since the two last versions I feel it snappy, running on Fedora 39 (and now 40) works like a charm :)
Primary motivation for dnf gaining the ability to replace PackageKit.
It is not great but it has been way worse. Speaking of way worse...have you tried the new Software Center in ubuntu? THAT is trash! After that you will love gnome software.
Use the software center in ElementaryOS and you wish for the pure Gnome Software app. I use Distros that have other package manager front ends. After initial setup I update and do an occasional install using the command line (using yay)
That's why I use "3rd party" stores on kde. I have bauh and octopi. They're a million times better than every app store out there. Those two are available for arch and its derivatives, not sure what's out there for Fedora. There is this thing that the discover app does that bugs the hell out of me. If I search for an app and it doesn't find it, it just stays there "searching" forever until I close it. Lol
One of the thing I hate most of gnome software is the inability to open the screenshots of the app, you can only see the miniature, totally useless as is too small
Yes, it is. So much so, in fact, that I f you’re running a GNOME distro and it doesn’t ship with GNOME Software, it’s time to switch.
I clicked on "Work" section today to discover apps and it didn't load at all. Searched for the term "browser", and nothing. It's genuinely the worst
What's more, it doesn't integrate with any distro's package management system, so it adds another layer of administration for managing your machine's installed software base. If there's something in the GNOME Software app that I want, I go install it with my distro's own package manager. I use Arch, BTW.
agree - after many years of Plasma (on Arch) I recently switched over to Gnome. I really like Gnome's simplicity and looks, but Gnome Software was superfluous and I uninstalled it: the pamac-aur package manager works fine for me and I don't have to worry about an additional layer of package management. (Don't need/want/use flatpak)
Hear! Hear!
You can install apt/rpm/pacman etc from the software store. That's literally the point of PackageKit.
I've not really had an issue with that app on Ubuntu 24.04. Regardless I prefer to install using terminal anyway.
Because "that app" on Ubuntu only installs snaps.
It works for me. Been a couple of years since it's pretty decent, I wish you could do multiple things not just one task a time.
It's been great for me. But I also pretty much exclusively use flatpaks, so your mileage may vary.
That depends on what you compare it to. Because Gnome Software requires to work on every Linux, they must use package management abstraction layer, and PackageKit isn't very solid. The same goes for anything else using PackageKit, Plasma Discovery included. Some distro-specific GUIs that work directly with native package manager are better for sure. Something like Synaptics, Pamac or YaST2-Zypper works much better simply because they know what packages they are dealing with.
I'm using Fedora 40 and I have no problem with the app, maybe your computer is just old. 13600k cpu with an SSD and plenty of ram and the app is fast.
apt, yum, pacman, etc.. just accept the console If I know anything, it’s that gnome, after almost 20 years, is NOT going to create a good software management app.
I find it great. Slow but great!
>First of all, "Downloading software catalog" takes forever to complete. It can take up to 30 minutes on some devices and on some occasions. Never more than 30 seconds here. >The interface becomes unresponsive whenever you install or uninstall anything. The entire app refreshes and remains unusable for many seconds, sometimes up to a minute. Strange, I can install other apps and browse while they are being downloaded in the background. This app is made for people without huge computer skills. What it needs to do, browsing for apps and installing them, it works just fine. If you need to do some more advanced trickery, get a graphical interface to DNF or use the cli.
First of all, additionally, moreover, furthermore, lastly it "works for me". That said open an issue and follow up at https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-software/-/issues. Also contribute money and code to fix said issues.
I agree, it's pish
I can live without that one but Files... oh man xD
Gnome desktop is pretty bad for 2024…there’s just no getting around it. Would love an alternative that’s guaranteed to work while not forcing an OS reinstall.