July 6th, 2010 byUbuntu Software Center has amazing improvements lined-up for Maverick Meerkat and early alpha adopters are highly excited about the progress. However, what is Ubuntu Software Center? It’s merely a container, it’s only as good as the content within. We’re already aware it’s a show-stopper for new Ubuntu users and there is a papercut milestone for fixing this issue of poor descriptions. Bugs have been filed and members are eagerly grabbing the bugs to fix these issues.
Looking at the list of bugs currently reported , you’ll notice there have been only a few handful of bugs reported. This can’t be right! Are these few shoddy descriptions the only ones causing all the havoc?
How many of us have actually read an application’s description before installing it? Most of us don’t need to, as we’re already familiar with the application and what it offers us. A new user, on the other hand, is oblivious to it’s wonders and has to read the description to know what awaits beyond. We need to make it easier for them to choose and not confuse them with jargon!
You want more people using your favorite applications?
Read the description it offers and make sure it is optimal. If it contains unnecessary jargon, file a bug in the application and add a papercut task. Or, if your favorite application is listed as a deviant, grab the bug and fix it!
Let’s improve these descriptions and make sure Ubuntu Software Center really rocks!
Myth-busting Papercuts
Clearing up a few misconceptions:
- Ubuntu hides papercut fixes from upstream. No! – Every patch has been sent upstream. The changes flow into Ubuntu only after it has been fixed upstream, Desktop team has been very keen to make sure no patch is left behind.
- Papercuts projects does not include Kubuntu. No! – The goal of papercuts for Kubuntu has always been 10 per each release, 16 Kubuntu bugs have been fixed over the year. Kubuntu can still benefit from more attention, a few of the Kubuntu papercut bugs are still in need of triage. If you use Kubuntu, you can help triage these bugs!
- There is a ninja squad employed by Canonical swooshing around fixing Papercuts. No! – Most of the fixes are from community members [See Hall Of Fame below] and the amazing upstreams themselves.
Papercuts Hall Of Fame:
Marcus Carlson, Saïvann Carignan, Scott Howard, Travis Watkins, Chow Loong Jin, Jean-Baptiste Lallement, Scott Ritchie, Mackenzie Morgan, Andrew Higginson, Ted M Lin, Torrey Rice, Conn O Griofa, Luke Symes, Andrew Starr-Bochicchio, Iain Churcher, Alexey Fisher, Yves Kurz, Matt Perry, Alex Launi, Andrew, Dries Harni, Jonathan Thomas, Iain Lane, Xiegai Shan, Mirco Müller, Alexander Sack, Neil J. Patel, Chris Cheney, Chris Halse Rogers, Cody Russell, Didier Roche, Bryce Harrington, Martin Pitt, Robert Ancell, Jonathan Riddell, Michael Vogt, Sebastien Bacher, Ken VanDine, Marcel Stimberg, Jean-Louis Dupond, Dries Harnie, Luca Ferretti.
For more information about Papercuts and getting involved, read the wiki.
The toolkit
30 Responseshide comments
Use of jargon:
I’m fine with removing jargon for new users, but jargon is typically what power-users use when they search. Say you’re looking for an document viewer that can open .xps files. What would you search for? I would search for xps, and find… nothing.
Maybe what we need are both good simple descriptions as well as a more detailed description that us jargon-loving people can use.
@David: What you mention is essential. Users do search for applications based on the file extensions. If you check the GIMP’s current description , it has instructions about accessing a remote file and using MIDI device as input. Such info should exist in the Help documentation and not in package’s description.
We just have to remove the *unnecessary* jargon.
@Vishnoo I dont no if this is the right place.
One great thing for Ubuntu Software center would be some quality control.
Instead of having 10-20 music players and most are worthless. Have 6 that’s decent or have at least some quality..
Eg: What’s PORNVIEW doing in repos….
Animesh:
Pornview is simply unfortunate naming. It’s just a photo/video cataloger.
Mackenzie:
I for one did check it out. before posting.
There are other examples of software not working but in repos.
Gshutdown doesn shutdown computer. That’s a big bug for an program that advertises to do so.
I dint mean to pick it.
Just wanted to highlight some amount of quality control will surely make USC much better.
Maybe we need a thumbs up/thumbs down widget in the description page, this data could be transmitted to a server. This way we can highlight the worst offenders. From there bugs could be filed and alternatives could be solicited.
Its also a nice way of letting people contribute to Ubuntu in round about way.
Something similar could be said for application screenshots as well.
@Vish
Again dont know if this is a good place to post,
But had an idea. What if people could also rate a software as -VE also ,
The one software has many -ve , some guys at canonical can test it, and try to contact the person to improve the program.
And till than you can HIDE it from normal view.
That would make sense.
Please let me know if this is a good place or maybe we can discuss it over irc
@Matthew , Animesh Meher:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SoftwareCenter#Ratings%20and%20reviews Most of ratings mockup should make it for Maverick.
Maybe writing a review for it as to why it is problematic?
@Animesh: Also , adding ideas to Brainstorm[http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/] , is a good way to catch MPT’s attention. He is always on the look out for good ideas.
I used Brainstorm’s Add/Remove and Synaptic sections to collect ideas for Ubuntu Software Center a year ago. Unfortunately Brainstorm hasn’t been much use to me since then, because there’s no section devoted to USC itself. (Last December I asked the moderators to add a section, but they still haven’t gotten around to it.)
Most ideas people suggest now for USC are already mentioned on the specification page. But if you think of one that isn’t, you can find me on IRC or e-mail me.
Meanwhile, on the specific topic of programs that don’t do anything useful, Vish and I have discussed making that a new class of papercut — “Fails To Do Anything Useful” (FTDAU), like the existing “Fails To Build From Source” (FTBFS). So, Animesh, please report bugs for things like that and tag them “ftdau”.
@mpt holidays are recommended for human beings and designers alike. How’s yours going?
@Vishnoo – A lot of people won’t want to create a ubuntu account just to rate the software. Bug reporting and textual comments yes but for a thumbs up/down or star rating, I don’t think an account should be necessary
I’d like the Software Center to have its terminology cleaned up. Specifically, I’d like it to stop referring to “Free” as “Gratis”, and instead of citing the license of programs as “Open Source” I’d like it to cite the specific free software license – e.g., GPL, MPL, BSD license, etc.
As “free” software is properly or at least mainly used to refer to freedom not price, it would also be much better to cite the price of applications which are available gratis as $0.00 (or local equivalent) instead of citing the ambiguous “free” as a price.
… meaning, of course, that I’d like to see it stop referring to what is “without charge” as “free”. Sorry about the mistake.
@Carsten I agree, it should just say “no charge” and be done with it. As for licensing, I think part of the problem for “normal” users is that they’ve never heard of GPL/GPL2/BSD/ETC/ETC. Hell, they might not even know what “open source” means!
So maybe this goes under the technophile section – maybe have 2 tabs of info for every app, the first being description, and second being technical info – and that could include dependencies, licensing info, file extensions like .XPS which was mentioned in the first comment, method of interactivity with other apps if it is intended to do so (codecs for media players, for example: where will they go, where will they be installed and which .config file will be auto updated to tell the media player(s) where the codecs are)
When you buy a Mac (just using an example you register the software (which there should be no harm doing, unless you’re in the Stallman paranoiaboy club, no offense to any of you, moving on.)
Maybe when you first set up Ubuntu you set up an Ubuntu acct for the One cloud, music purchasing, etc, etc. A login. That’s all it would give you. And it would be optional, and skippable, but BUILT IN TO THE INSTALLER. then people could send in whatever info they want, and post on boards like this without putting in info, they’d already by signed in with their Uccount (phonetic spelling? with an Ubuntu twist? no? whatever).
The Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down is a GREAT idea, though, and would be like Yahoo! Answers, and we could see when we sort by popularity *how much more popular* really is Mplayer than VLC, and why is it that way? maybe there could be a comment box when you click a thumbs up or down that’s optional to fill in (all of this could be anonymous, and why not implement it? What bad could come of something like this? People LOVE to give their opinions. They hate to have to *work* to do it though. So let them! And everyone wins!)
@Carsten I agree, it should just say “no charge” and be done with it. As for licensing, I think part of the problem for “normal” users is that they’ve never heard of GPL/GPL2/BSD/ETC/ETC. Hell, they might not even know what “open source” means.
So maybe this goes under the technophile section – maybe have 2 tabs of info for every app, the first being description, and second being technical info – and that could include dependencies, licensing info, file extensions like .XPS which was mentioned in the first comment, method of interactivity with other apps if it is intended to do so (codecs for media players, for example: where will they go, where will they be installed and which .config file will be auto updated to tell the media player(s) where the codecs are)
When you buy a Mac (just using an example you register the software (which there should be no harm doing, unless you’re in the Stallman paranoiaboy club, no offense to any of you, moving on.)
Maybe when you first set up Ubuntu you set up an Ubuntu acct for the One cloud, music purchasing, etc, etc. A login. That’s all it would give you. And it would be optional, and skippable, but BUILT IN TO THE INSTALLER. then people could send in whatever info they want, and post on boards like this without putting in info, they’d already by signed in with their Uccount (phonetic spelling? with an Ubuntu twist? no? whatever).
The Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down is a GREAT idea, though, and would be like Yahoo! Answers, and we could see when we sort by popularity *how much more popular* really is Mplayer than VLC, and why is it that way? maybe there could be a comment box when you click a thumbs up or down that’s optional to fill in (all of this could be anonymous, and why not implement it? What bad could come of something like this? People LOVE to give their opinions. They hate to have to *work* to do it though. So let them! And everyone wins!)
FLAG – delete this and one of my previous posts?
thanks
sorry for the double post -_-’ it kept giving me 404 errors, etc, when i clicked submit… apparently 2 of them went through.
maybe a STAR system would be nice 0-5 stars so you can see easy which app is fav…
I am a relatively new user of Linux and Ubuntu, and my comment about the software center is some of the entries are indeed confusing, For instance one program I might be interested is listed 4 or 5 times, and I am not sure if the entries are optional libraries, or segments that all have to be loaded, or different versions.
So far I like what I see with Ubuntu, but to be honest, to capture the interest of joe user at large, it has to be simple.
Love the comments about the rating system. Mint has done a great job of this. I’d love to see star ratings + comments enabled.
I think it would also be useful to have older versions of programs tucked away somewhere, as well as outdated meta-packages. For example, if you search firefox, you get a load of dummy upgrade packages for everything from version 2 (way old) to version 4 (way unstable). For someone who doesn’t know what version of firefox they want, this can be problematic.
Also useful would be some way of distinguishing GUI apps from CLI apps. For example wants to write music, so they download Lilypond. Great, till they find out it’s a language, not a program, and when they look for Lilypond in the menu, it’s nowhere to be found. Even if it were not removed, putting these cli things at the bottom of searches for new users could help them find the apps they want to use.
Hi Folks, Newbie to Ubuntu. Debian, Linux in general. Its Fantastic.
I have noticed that software like audio players at times need mp3 codecs etc. installed. Would love to see a “you may also need” section appear for each piece of software that may ned it, so that new users downloading a program don’t end up head scratching as to why its not operating as it should. Just a thought.
Also like the thumbs up/down idea.
Am spreading the word…..keep up the good work!!
I think that there should be a reinstall option. Uninstalling a package and then re-installing it manually can be a pain, especially if its a dummy package.
And the new Ubuntu ubuntu software center looks awesome
great improvement 
i just want to share these two efforts on which i came across:
* http://fossfor.us/recent_reviews (has data on reviews, the same idea online)
* http://debtags.alioth.debian.org/ (with tags like “format: html”, “interface:x11″, “scope:english”)
This is a wonderful initiative. Furthermore, I disagree with Les that Mint is something to emulate. The user comments that they include in package descriptions in the Software Manager look as if they were written by illiterate 13 year olds or people who rarely use English. I certainly don’t want to diminish the contributions of speakers of languages other than English, but poorly written comments would be a major turn off for most users, I’d wager.
I think we should use tags/keywords and a description, allow the user to search both. Also an embedded video player would work wonders for demoing games to determine their value to your graphical requirements. LOVE UBUNTU! KEEP IT UP & KEEP IT FREE (as in beer)!
I agree with AdamF, but think that something similar to the thing at the bottom of Amazon pages and some other online shops “others who bought this also bought…” or similar.
I understand that some people, like me, install lots of completely unrelated apps at the same time, but it could work.
i would really like to see a few things done. a very good search filtering system available (sourceforge, etc.) there needs to be clarification on dependencies, or extras deemed most important to actual usability, with the option to add from same menu(or include by default with option to uncheck, though not hidden to0 well) as well as a fairly comprehensive list of most applicable/highest rated add ons, extensions codecs etc.again from same window. so people that think installing software is exciting(like me when implemented correctly) can have their fun without having to bounce all over usc in embarrassment( especially when trying to show new user how easy everything is!) Anyways…as it is now the search engine brings up software that is sometimes almost esoterically/metaphorically linked. just whatever we do don’t get the microsoft mentality of trying to block and control user’s movement through “their” own operating system.also, every capability with improvements of synaptic should still be available. maybe usc should have three main “view filters” …”human”, “nerd”, and “major dork” with less off putting/less hilarious titles. btw, what’s with the luciferianism with 10.4? i mean come on!
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That’s way more clever than I was excpetnig. Thanks!