The new look for Muon package administration

Conclusion

The question of Muon's identity depends on the user. The user who can't or won't become accustomed to graphical package managers or command lines may consider Muon to be the long overdue KDE equivalent to Gnome software. Although there is much to be done on the development front, the current state is a good indicator of what lies ahead. However, Muon 5 lags behind considerably when compared to Gnome software, which has several years on Muon in terms of maturity. If the to-do list found on the tarball is to be believed, then Muon should become an actual software center at some point. It is not clear how this will look.

In particular, users of Muon 2 tend to think of the current versions of the program as a step backward. Even if it is assumed that the broad functionality will become comparable to other products, it is still true that once you get used to command-line tools like Apt, DNF, Pacman, and Zypper, you will find them better suited for managing all packages and not just a subset.

When in doubt, package management also works without an app store clone. Apper offers similar functionality by means of a variety of filters, although this program may never succeed in scaling the heights of integration provided by AppStream. For those who don't want to limit themselves to QT, there is always GTK, which has a number of alternatives.

Counterpoint: Is Everything Merely an App Store?

Since the time of the first open source operating systems, tools like Dpkg and RPM have been bringing order to the systems. The proprietary competitors from Apple and Microsoft offered nothing comparable. As a result, the big advantage to having a Linux system was for a long time the fine-grained and easy-to-use structure of its software manager. Back then, the PC was the usual entry point for initiation into the world of computers. Mobile telephones of the time could be very useful especially when used together with a PDA or a notebook. However, the phones were mostly used just as phones.

The victory march of the feature phone changed all of this. The younger generation no longer makes its first experiences with programmable computing devices at home on a PC. Rather, they may relatively early in life experiment with a smartphone, which can be used for placing calls and also for computing tasks. Although Linux is running in three out of every four of these devices, not much attention has been paid to the advantages of a central package manager. Instead, mobile devices typically have a rigid basic system and a package manager that comes from the manufacturer of the device. These systems are usually difficult to maintain. As a result, software pools have come into existence to make individual apps available for installation.

This is where modern package management tools such as Muon or Gnome are positioned. They are intended to guide users to see exactly what they are accustomed to with mobile devices. This train has already left the station for many developers. But, there are still some users who want the same results as the developers. It is not clear whether the developers will win out.

Undoubtably, this situation will divide users into first class and second class: Those who insist on finding the functionality of their smartphone on their desktop or laptop versus those who are knowledgeable enough that they want to maintain complete control over their own systems. The Linux community is already splintered into factions because of countless incompatible distributions. This issue of who has control will divide the community even further. (Mario Blättermann)

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