Suggestion: Rename - “Software Updater” and / or “Software & Updates”
The names are too similar and both names are truncated in Gnome
Searching for “update” in Gnome - the results are “Software Upd…” and “Software & Up…”
Renaming these two could result in easier searching and could be quicker to differentiate them
Suggestions on new names:
“Software Updater” change to
“Update”
“Software & Updates” change to
“Manage Software” or “Software Manager”
The issue has been reported on launchpad a while ago
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/software-properties/+bug/1222527
Please note that both programs were previously called, respectively, “Update Manager” and “Software Sources”.
It was a lot of work for documentation and localization volunteers to update all references to both programs when the renamings happened. Take that into account when suggesting yet another rename, please.
The ideal scenario here would be to add “Software & Updates” to the system settings. In the Gnome search view, system settings are now displayed very different from applications, which would solve the issue.
What would be needed in order to add Software & Updates to the system settings. I think @jbicha has experience with working on Gnome Control Center. @jbicha, do you know if this is feasible?
I agree, this is confusing. Just “Software” and Update Software" makes it easier to distinguish. This stands out the first time you look at the installed programs when Focal Fossa is installed.
For the record:
Maybe Changing the icon to something like this: https://imgur.com/a/XZsdiHT (suggested here: Suggestion: Icon@All application: add gear to "Software & updates" ) might work before taking the time to rename or integrate.
“Software Update” and “App Store?” Or “Ubuntu Store?” Agree that the current names could cause confusion.
Hello, I have the same problem, I can’t find where to post my feedback about the desktop, therefore, I will post it here.
I just wanted to say that I do not think it is very welcoming for beginners users to have a lot of options when they search for the word “software”, too many applications appear and it it is not clear which one should be used and what is the relation between them.
$ cd /usr/share/applications/
$ grep Software *
I don’t have any of them installed, so I can’t help you here, but when you look for freedesktop.org desktop files you will see that you can disable them being showed up depending on your DE
Hi @edapx thanks for the feedback and also apologies for the confusing state.
For the in-development series of Ubuntu you can report user experience issues in this repository. I’ve set it up exactly for issues like this.
In terms of the situation in your screenshot, I am also frustrated by this. We could just change the launcher keywords and names, but I think the software management experience needs a more holistic rethink. I’m expecting an improvement in 23.10 but it won’t be until 24.04 when its fully resolved.
At the moment we haven’t discussed backporting better search terms to the LTSs but I’ll put it on our backlog to consider.
Nice awesome icons! The last icon on the right (the blue one) would look really awesome saying just “Software” underneath. “& Updates” is kind of redundant
Many thanks @tim-hm, I am going to fill the issue on github soon. I would expect to find an icon “Manage Software” under the menu’ “Settings”. And I would expect to find just one app that does the job of installing, upgrading and deleting software (good old times when synaptic was considered to be cool), and this app takes care of the system packages installed through apt, the drivers (propertary drivers included), and the user space packages installed through snap. Some Ubuntu derivated distro already have a clearer software management interface, I am thinking particularly to popOS.
Also, it would be nice to have a central website where users can report feedback, I think I’ve spent more or less 20min to simply find a way to post the screenshot. And it was discourse.ubuntu.com, last time that I have submitted an issue was bugs. launchpad .net (january 2023) and today it has been github.com .
The conclusion of your observation is that software is not very useful as search term. That’s probably true more of less everywhere.
Well, your conclusion may apply to you, but not to me. If I look at the picture posted:
I know to manage the software on Ubuntu and I do it since 10 years, that’s not the point.The point is that this interface is bad and for a beginner it is a problem.
the screenshot is a disaster in multiple ways. you should be able to sort it out with browsing and patching /usr/share/applications/
In your screenshot you see 4 different applications for different usage:
‘Ubuntu Software’ == snap-store is a snap app to install mainly snaps
‘Software’ == gnome-software is a deb app to install .deb and flatpack apps
‘Software Updater’ == update-manager manages updates but does not install new software
‘Software & Updates’ == software-properties is used to set some rules for software management
The icon ‘Ubuntu Software’ seems duplicate