Feature Request for Discover

Brainstorm
1

Hi KDE developers,
I would have liked to submit a feature request for Discover for discussion.

It would be very useful for me if the listed updates in Discover were separated again into KDEneon and Ubuntu packages in the system updates. In my opinion, this also makes a lot of sense, as the packages for the Ubuntu system base have nothing to do with the KDEneon packages.

In short, there should be more categories than the existing two (system software and applications).

Is such a new feature in Discover already being planned in the medium term or does my suggestion have a real chance of being implemented by the KDE developers?

I am attaching a graphic I created myself for a better understanding. Here I have marked my feature request in red.

discover
discover1325×752 133 KB

Regards
Michael

2

I think that Discover still aims to be a more simplified app store, not a package manager, and it isn’t a tool specific to KDE neon, or for apt-based systems.

In any case, you can do this using the filters in Synaptic or Muon package manager.

Screenshot_20240524_121228
Screenshot_20240524_121228872×821 85.5 KB

3 Likes
3

Hi claydoh,
Thanks for the answer. Can a package manager be precisely differentiated from an app store? I think the boundary is relatively blurred. I don’t see Discover as a package manager and I don’t think it should become one. But perhaps a little more and more precise information wouldn’t hurt.

My suggestion is simply aimed at making it a little clearer and more informative.

Another question about Muon. Is the Muon package manager officially supported by KDEneon if I use it to update my system? If not, there is no advantage for me to install Muon in addition to Discover.

4

Muon is unmaintained and has been removed from ubuntu, so won’t be in neon when it upgrades to 24.04, but it and synaptic are front-end GUI tools for Apt, which is the native packaging system on Ubuntu (and thus neon) and work with any Ubuntu or Debian based system.

It makes zero difference updating using Discover, Synaptic/Muon , or apt on the command line in neon. The GUI tools here are using apt under their hoods, so the end results are the same. I have been using all of these on my neon systems for 8 or more years now.

An app store presents apps - software you can touch, if you will.

A package manager is for handling the individual packages involved in the entire system - libraries, kernels, commandline utilities, and whatever else.

The issue I see with trying to separate out an individual source is two-fold:

  1. To separate out neon’s repo to list it’s software separately would involve customizing Discover specifically for one single distro.

  2. The other is the “why” for this, and the added complexity and work needed to achieve #1. Apt may use multiple repositories, but I do not believe it is aware that one (neon’s repo added to the base Ubuntu ones) is more ‘special’ than the others, to separate them. And what about the Ubuntu packages that neon ones do depend on very often, where would these be listed? Wouldn’t this actually be more confusing?

Again, imnsho of course, this adds complexity not only to the code, but also for the UI and the user - there are more powerful tools available for the purpose that are specific to the packaging system a distro uses. Discover is designed to be a simpler tool that works pretty much the same way across distros and packaging systems. If apt itself had built-in methods for this, it would probably be an easier thing to do maybe? But it still would require special customization in Discover specific to neon for the purpose.

1 Like