Hello, KDE users!
KDE Plasma in the popular distros like Fedora, installs with KDE App Store, which called Discover. After viewing EndeavourOS Forum, I read users comparing of different Linux GUI stores and read many different opinions about KDE discover.
If KDE designers and developers knew more different opinions about Discover design from community, it will be help change app in the best way, so I decided to create this topic here for discussing KDE Discover interface and getting feedback from community.
Here you can tell your thoughts about Discover, but remember KDE Code of Conduct and,please say more specifically that you want, because thoughts like “KDE discover is not modern” or “it is bad program” are not help change application.
Pinging @dalto for his vote.
CCing @ngraham , @Anditosan for controling discussion and hearing ideas.
Thanks Community for all ideas!
I will share my specific feedback on Discover in a bit but first I would like to clarify about the post on the EndeavourOS forum. I have a tendency to become curious about some random topic and then I spend some time exploring it. There often isn’t much reason to it, it is simply part of who I am. Last week, I became curious about all the various software stores available across the Linux ecosystem. More specifically, I was interested in how accessible they were for a casual Linux user and how easy it was to discover software in each. So, I took at all the stores I was aware of to see where they were at. After doing that, I decided to share my findings on the EOS forum where I have been a member for many years and have quite a few friends at.
If anyone is curious to read it, that post is here. That being said, I don’t think it claims that Discover is a bad program or even that it isn’t modern. My opinion on Discover is that it is a highly functional application but it could be improved from a UX/UI perspective as it relates to to usability and discoverability of software. Specifically, when considering a casual Linux user(as opposed to an enthusiast or someone who is highly technical)
I know that feedback isn’t very useful without any specifics so I will create a followup post with some of the areas I think it could be improved and how. Keeping in mind, that the feedback is for the very specific use case mentioned above.
As promised, here is my more detailed feedback. That being said, I want to reinforce my original intention was not to overly critique or disparage Discover, but only to learn more about the state of software stores in general. However, since that has been called out, I want to provide specific feedback that is potentially actionable.
I would further add that I fully understand that projects like Discover are developed mostly by volunteers and, as an open source developer myself, I know that complaining doesn’t help the product much.
The primary issue I was referring to is the lack of discoverability for applications. As it relates to Discover, I think there are three primary reasons for this.
The first is that the applications take up too much space so you can see very few at a time:
This makes it hard to find applications because you see so few at a time.
For comparison, here is the same size window in Bazaar(The aspect ratios are difference because I did not include the Discover sidebar/menu in my screenshot):
Now, I am not saying it should look exactly like that but look at how much more I can take in at the same time. In some cases, spreading out information can make it more readable but not in this case I think. In this case I am trying to find something and seeing more at a time really facilitates that.
The next big issue is that Discover does not group applications from multiple sources:
If I click on either of those, it knows they are the same because it will show me both options on the list. This wastes a ton of space since there are going to be so much overlap between the repos and the containerized formats. It would be great if there was at least an option to collapse them. It would make it a lot easier to find things.
Next, and most importantly, is that none of the current sort options are very helpful at discovering software.
Look again at the Bazaar screenshot. That is the default sorting. I am not sure exactly what it is sorting on but it is clearly some element of popularity. That is what you usually what you want when you don’t know what you are looking for. That helps you find software. Discover seems to sort by rating by default. If there is no good way to get popularity data across package sources, I would argue a better default sort would be the number of ratings. This would allow more common software to bubble to the top.
Lastly, Discover seems to lack a view that shows what is trending. This is a good way to find new, up and coming software and is a great compliment to the popularity view.
Anyway, those are just some thoughts from me. Do with them what you will. 
seems a fair critique with some low hanging fruit that could make the experience significantly better for new users.
i will point out that the discover home page looks more like your bazaar example with two columns of cards, but once you dive into the categories or the search tool you get reduced to a single column for some reason.
in general more sort options is always better, but sorting by number of reviews would seem to be the best default for discovery and the values are already available
the option to sort by number of installs would be a significantly more difficult metric to implement, it would seem to me.
Hello Everyone, I’ve noticed a pretty consistent accessibility issue when using dark themes. Basically, dark icons seem to blend into the background making it hard to see what it actually is.
Here’s a screenshot highlighting this issue:
I couldn’t upload any more screenshots since I’m a new user, but I have also noticed this issue with the Flatpak icon.
I have some suggestions here and there :
- Related to the KDE Store :
- Specifying the type of asset (icon-theme, widgets… ) in view where multiple asset types may be seen
- Use Discover to download new things (maybe embedding a view in system setting)
- For the installed components :
- Use the multi-collumn design as mentioned above
- A filter that can filter things from the source (flatpak, snap …), uninstalled apps that still have config files and add-ons
Other than that and what had been mentioned above, I think Discover have a good UI/UX 
Hi, just a suggestion: the progress bar being in the lower left corner isn’t great for me. I press to install a program at the top-right corner and it took me a few moments to see what has happened as I didn’t notice the progress down the lower left & it only takes up about one tenth of the width of the screen. One either closer to the buttons, or central & bolder would be nice. Or like when downloading a big file in a browser - typically a pop-up bubble notification will appear at the browser top edge & then fade out & leave a progress circle/bar, something more dynamic like that maybe would be nice.
This is on… Discover v6.3.6 on Debian 13 (it took me a while to find the About button on the left side, which is very unusual). Sorry if this has already changed on newer versions of Discover.
Feel free to disregard if this is bad suggestion. Thanks.
Edit: apparently newer Discover versions have a better progress bar already.