lubuntu-qa team mailing list archive

[Jörn Schönyan <joern.schoenyan@xxxxxx>]

Hi everyone, replies inline.

On Montag, 28. September 2015 14:18:45 CEST, Rafael Laguna wrote:
> Hi, guys:
>
> Yes, Phill is right. Jörn and I made plans for improving the 
> apps installation in Lubuntu, as well as managing PPAs. We'll 
> have results soon. Jörn is working hard on it.
Yes - I don't have a time plan, but the new Software Center will be ready 
before the release of 16.04, I guess at the end of the year we will have a 
preview. The Update Manager is ready for testing, but missing 2 or 3 
features I really want to have and needs to be a bit more fail-safe, as it 
wasn't tested under hard conditions (bad or no internet connections and 
stuff).
> About App Grid, it needs an Ubuntu One account that sometimes 
> it kicks  you out, so it's buggy. Ubuntu MATE is considering 
> adopt it as their own Software Centre and dropping USC which is, 
> in my opinion, a mistake, because the guys in Canonical are also 
> improving USC for the Ubuntu Touch market and the forthcoming 
> Snappy packages.
I've tested all the alternative software centers in the past, but not even 
one satisfied me. But of course, that is only my personal opinion.
> So I think we're in the right path. I know you don't see much 
> "dev" activity lately, but believe me when I tell you we're 
> working hard on the next LXQt version of Lubuntu and polishing 
> every single detail to improve your desktop experience.
Right, I think the new software center could solve some problems we have, 
make Lubuntu much easier for newcomers and it could be a core feature of 
Lubuntu. All the things following now are still in the planning and there 
was no real discussion about it, so this is a great moment for further 
ideas and improvements, please feel free to comment and express your 
thoughts about it, I would really appreciate it.

The new software center will be in fact a more modern version of our 
traditional LSC, written in Qt and with a more robust backend for 
application data (for more informations, google "Appstream").

But I imagine a new feature to customize the Lubuntu experience for the 
users needs. Some people want an office computer and they should get it. 
The new software center should be able to "ask" the user what he needs: 
office suite, graphics software, font managing, driver support for printers 
from a specific brand or simmilar. Multimedia users may want a tool to cut 
and convert videos, so they should have a nice collection of tools to 
choose from. I think there are a lot of simmilar use cases. Afaik Ubuntu 
MATE has a feature like this in their welcome screen.

This would even allow us to ship a minimal (or core) version like Xubuntu 
does, with only a bare desktop and very limited applications or no 
applications at all, without leaving users alone in their application 
choice and initial setup of their machine. Our problem being restricted to 
an iso size of ~700 megabytes wouldn't hurt that much in the future.

I hope my explanation was clear enough, feel free to ask questions about 
it.
> Cheers!
>
> Rafael Laguna
> Lubuntu Artwork Team
Happy discussions and have a nice week!