GNOME Software is one of the more exciting features that I’m looking forward to in the next release of Fedora. This is a brand new project, but the pace of development has been fast.
If you are a Fedora user, you probably already know that the graphical package manager in any of the editions is nothing to write home about. And that applies to Yum Extender, Apper and the gpk-application.
Well, on the main edition, which uses the GNOME Shell, and which uses the gpk-application as the default graphical package manager, GNOME Software will make package management a whole lot better, when it’s ready for prime time.
It is intended to be just like any other GNOME Shell application, like Boxes, Music, etc, so it is integrated into the desktop. This way, all distributions that use the desktop will have a common graphical interface for managing applications.
GNOME Software is a Fedora project, so I don’t think it is available on any other distribution at this stage. It’s definitely not available on pre-release editions of Ubuntu GNOME 13.10. Here are some screen shot of it, which I took from a test installation of Fedora 20 alpha.
The main interface.
The rest of the main interface. I’m sure you noticed that the graphics are of the plain-vanilla variety.
Partial list of installed applications.
Available updates.
Partial list of applications in the Network -> Instant Messaging subcategory.
Partial list of applications in the Network -> Web Browser subcategory.
Partial list of applications in the Games -> Arcade subcategory.
Search result view.
No results on search. You mean that no application contains the work security in its name or description!
Attempting to remove or uninstall an application.
Yes, I do.
Attempting to install an application.
But not before authenticating as root.
As if to remind me that it is not yet reading for prime time, it crashed. And this happened at every attempt to install any application.
Hope this shows you what GNOME Software will mean to the GNOME 3 desktop, once it is production-ready. But even at this stage, it gets a thumbs up from me.
