Why does Discover only show applications with AppStream metadata?

[rokejulianlockhart]

@claydoh

Discover is an app store, not a full-featured package manager, it isn’t designed to show all individual packages, nor most command-line tools. I also believe it depends on a package having correct metadata included

appears to mean that

@rokejulianlockhart

An application needs AppStream metadata to be presented via discover

If true, why? It seems like it would make finding a lot of applications needlessly difficult for new users.

[WilsonEPhillips]

Discover does what its name implies. It is a way to quickly find and add programs from the app store. It works very well for that purpose. It is not a system package manager. It doesn’t need to complicate itself more than it is. We already have package managers for that.

[rokejulianlockhart]

@WilsonEPhillips

We already have package managers for that.

But why would you separate the ability to manage packages without AppStream metadata into a separate application?

As stated,

@rokejulianlockhart

considering that even the Microsoft Store and Google Play Store allow their users to view dependency packages like the MSIX VS C++ runtimes, or Android System WebView packages, respectively

I don’t understand why Linux DEs have decided that managing non-AppStream packages during updates is fine for their default PM GUI, but not in any other situation.

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@WilsonEPhillips

?

[WilsonEPhillips]

Not everything has a GUI. Of those that do, not all run Plasma. The package managers came first. The app stores are a new thing and they do what they are intended to do.

Don’t confuse Android and Windows with this. The Android app store does not allow you to replace low level system packages. That comes with a full system upgrade pushed by the vendor or carrier. Windows is a whole other monster. It is trying to manage WSL from inside the app store and wants to put everything into the app store.

[rokejulianlockhart]

@WilsonEPhillips

The Android app store does not allow you to replace low level system packages. That comes with a full system upgrade pushed by the vendor or carrier.

It does, though. Everything manageable via pm (try with adb shell) should be manageable via the Play Store, or at least com.android.settings (which plasma-discover acts as).

To my knowldge, “System Updates” primary update singular binary packages that the package manager doesn’t want to touch, such as driver blobs despite of course being able to invoke pm to update APKs during the process.

@WilsonEPhillips

It is trying to manage WSL from inside the app store and wants to put everything into the app store.

WSL packages aren’t managed via the Microsoft Store. Only the distributions themselves, which are just reproducible images, to my knowledge, provided as MSIX packages.