Muon and kde-gtk-config moved to kde/workspace - was - Re: Moving repositories in the module structure

[Matthias Klumpp]

2014-10-06 19:57 GMT+02:00 Albert Astals Cid <aacid at kde.org>:
> El Dilluns, 6 d'octubre de 2014, a les 01:30:47, Aleix Pol va escriure:
>> [...]
>> I don't expect to compete with Apper. Muon Discover is a software center
>> and that's the main solution I'm pushing here, as I explained in Plasma.
>> Apper is a package manager. That is, a way where we can display to our
>> end-users what software there's available and also lets us a couple of
>> tricks to get biased.
I (as Apper contributor) would disagree with that - Daniel renamed
KPackageKit to Apper years ago to stress that Apper is not about
packages, but especially about applications. Unlike Muon or GNOME
Software, the goal for Apper is to manage packages and apps in one UI
though - and of course, Apper provides the session interface for
PackageKit, which Muon does not (yet?).
Does Muon work well with PackageKit on !Debian-based distros? I had
lots of trouble with porting the Ubuntu Software Center to PK, since
PK uses a completely different paradigm and API, compared to the
Aptdaemon interface the USC used, so it would have required a complete
rewrite.
Last time I looked at QApt, it looked slightly more similar to Aptd
compared to the PK API.
(I'll soon test Muon on Fedora by myself, but more from an "what can
be improved in AppStream?" PoV)

>> I think this is very important, because it opens an opportunity to offer
>> the end-user the full KDE experience we've been talking about. So far, the
>> way everyone had to expose software was by creating a (usually spin-off)
>> distribution where there was tons of software pre-installed. By providing a
>> software center we open channels to communicate with the user where he can
>> leverage on previous' users experience, as well as our own.
>
> I'm not sure I understand the difference between a "Software Center" and a
> "Package Manager", can you elaborate what is the difference?
Software Center almost always means that it shows GUI apps instead of
packages, where "app" is more tightly defined as "stuff which ship a
.desktop file in share/applictions with Type=application".
Package Managers display all kinds of packages on the system,
including debug symbol packages and e.g. header packages.
The Software Centers are generally thought to be more end-user
friendly, while package managers have a technically advanced user as
target audience.
Cheers,
    Matthias