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 āKDE discover is not modernā or āit is bad programā 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 isnāt 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 donāt think it claims that Discover is a bad program or even that it isnāt 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 isnāt 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 doesnāt 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 donāt 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, Iāve 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.
Hereās a screenshot highlighting this issue:
I couldnāt upload any more screenshots since Iām 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, widgetsā¦ ) 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 ā¦), 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 isnāt 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 didnāt 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 onā¦ 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.
Someone else have suggestions?
I agree with what others have said. Sometimes when Iām searching for multiple apps, and I want to go back to an app I was looking at previously, the only real way to do that is to search for it again. If there could be some kind of navigation system to click forward and back through your navigation history that would be great.
For me:
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Show the Download Size and the Installed Size separately. Currently, Discover vaguely just says āSizeā.
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Make the āInstallā button big and fat like other software stores (this is mostly cosmetic)
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Useful information must be upfront as well with bigger font size, i.e., instead of this:
We could do this:
-
Command line output preview about what is going on (package manager / flatpak both)
(Similar to the old Ubuntu Ubiquity installer or the Calamares installer, which have a little ā>ā which when click show complete terminal output about what is going on in the background.
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Improve the eye candy
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Option to hide unverified flatpaks (Like Mint does)
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Plus, other issues that people have pointed out here
One more thingā¦ I donāt find many opportunities to say GNOME does something right, but their software store is really well made. I canāt deny this.
Discover does seem to group software.
The thing is, it does not work correctly a lot of the times.
In the example you provided (VLCās case), yes, it does not work.
Itās caused by the appās internal ID differing between sources.
In theory all packaged versions of the app should have the same ID. In practice thereās nothing to force or mandate this, so sometimes the IDs differ.
There isnāt really anything Discover can do about it, unfortunately.
Nah mate thatās a job for the intern. Have them go though every single app and group them all correctly.
Where, though? It needs to be done in literally every distro.
Yeah, I have seen cases where they are clearly different but I have also seen cases where they are shown separately in the search list but if you open either one, you can select them from the dropdown which means that they probably do have the same ID?
Either way, it seems like the grouping logic should be the same in both places.
I guess theyāve really got their work cut out for them then. Get to it Bobbert!
The problem is they have no incentive to care. Distros that maintain their own package repos want you do only use software from those repos. If you do, this problem never shows up. Itās only when you add non-default repos to your system does the problem appear. And in this case, whereās the distroās incentive to care?
Ideally they would of course. But the incentive is not there unless theyāre really UX-focused.
I am a relatively newer KDE plasma user. Iāve recently tried out a few distros before settling into this one. Iāll likely repeat what others have said above, but I think re-iterating here can be helpful to show a preference for things among multiple users.
From my experience setting up things up and trying to manage software here are my current āpain pointsā:
For all of the windows, it would be nice if there were different options for how to display things. Right now itās all one list with very, very generous margins and padding.
- Compact display (reduce margins and padding)
- Grid view (allow us to configure number of columns)
- Details view (similar to Dolphin Details view)
More sorting options!
- Install date ā Iām not sure if this is actually tracked, but it would be nice to see most recently installed applications when Iām in the āInstalledā view.
- Rating ā Itās unclear how āPopularityā is calculated or where itās pulled from. I think overall āRatingā would be a good alternative
- # of Reviews
Also, for every option currently available and listed, it would be nice if I could flip whether itās sorting ascending/descending. Right now if I want to sort by the reverse all I can do is scroll.
The Release Date should actually show the release date when looking at packages. If I can sort by the release date, then I should also be able to know when that date actually was.
Installed Tab
The installed tab right now is not very useful. It lists everything and doesnāt have a good way to sort, categorize, or filter.
Allow sorting/grouping by category. These can be broad categories. Just scrolling through the default-install list, before Iāve installed anything, I think the current groupings would be helpful:
- Fonts
- Applications
- Within this you can use the existing categories that show in the search part of Discover
- Application Services/Plugins
- Alternatively, group the related service with the application it corresponds to
- System Services
Home (Browsing/Searching)
I think having a top rated category would be nice. It would list applications with a minimum # of reviews and then list the highly rated ones among that group.
If searching for something via a generic name, like āCodeā, it would be nice if more information about each package was available in the main screen, like āRelease Dateā.
@janine9vn, some of what you want will be in Plasma 6.7ās version of discover, including:
- A better ātop ratedā category on the home page
- āPopularityā being split into āmost reviewsā and ābest reviewsā in the sorting menu
I also want to increase the information density of the list views. Itās a tougher task than it looks because each item has to show so many pieces of information on it ā and youāre asking for an additional one too!
āInstall dateā is one Iād like too but unfortunately itās not very feasible for technical reasons. Discover knows when it installed something, but not when any other system tool (like your distroās package manager, or Flatpak) installed something. So the data would be incomplete or wrong a lot of the time.
Since Discover checks for updates (by default daily) and has to check the installed packages list in the process can it not say āthis wasnāt here when I checked yesterday therefore it was installed within the last X hoursā and approximate a date of install that way? Being a little more invasive, the file manager would know when the relevant files were created so if Discover cross referenced against that it could be more accurate.