Ubuntu Software Center Replacement – Why is it Being Replaced by GNOME Software?

16.04gnome-softwaresoftware-center

In Ubuntu 16.04 the Ubuntu Software Center will be replaced with the GNOME Software app, but why is this so? Why did they make this decision? Because GNOME Software hasn't even been released stably yet… So why should they rush it in to replace the Ubuntu Software Center which has been going stably for such a long time? There must be a very important reason for this change otherwise it is just craziness…

Best Answer

From OMG UBUNTU!

The decisions were taken at a recent desktop Sprint held at Canonical HQ in London.

“We are more confident in our ability to add support for Snaps to GNOME Software Centre (sic) than we are to Ubuntu Software Centre. And so, right now, it looks like we will be replacing [the USC] with GNOME Software Centre”, explains Ubuntu desktop manager Will Cooke at the Ubuntu Online Summit.

More from PCWorld

This isn’t huge news if you’ve been keeping track of the increasing deterioration of the Ubuntu Software Center. This summer, I chronicled how Canonical was slowly letting the Ubuntu Software Center wither and die. The paid “app store” side of it was axed with no warning to developers. Ubuntu MATE 15.10 already dropped the Software Center for something better.

The Software Center was great when it was released, offering a more user-friendly “app store”-like interface for installing Linux software. But it has stagnated and is rather slow. Other applications—particularly GNOME’s Software app—have caught up. Ubuntu’s developers haven’t really been working much on the Ubuntu Software Center, after all. They’ve been working on the next-generation app store for Unity 8, which works on Ubuntu for phones and will eventually arrive on the desktop with the converged Unity 8 desktop.

GNOME Software to the rescue

If you’ve ever used Fedora—or just seen screenshots of it—you’ve probably seen GNOME’s Software application in action. Fedora, a fairly GNOME-centric Linux distribution, was the first to adopt it.

This will give the traditional Unity 7 desktop on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS a stable software center that other people are working on and maintaining, freeing up development time. It’s also more modern, and Ubuntu’s developers feel it would be easier to add support for those new container-like Snappy packages to GNOME Software than to the old Ubuntu Software Center

Hope it helps!

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