[packagekit] Store

[Richard Hughes]

On 18 May 2011 09:02, Gareth Foster <earthwormgaz at gmail.com> wrote:
> It'd be nice if the GUI could be a little more friendly.

Yup, that's what we're aiming to do with AppStream:
http://distributions.freedesktop.org/wiki/AppStream

> Also, it'd be much better to see icons for these installable items. Things
> like system libraries I think, ought to be hidden for the basic use case,
> with an option somewhere to show them. Most of the time, the user just wants
> to see a list of Apps (there, I said it).

Sure, but I think we do need two views on the data, one (like we have
now) for packages, and one seporate app for applications.

> While we're at it, what about star ratings for said apps?

We're planning to use OCS for that.

> Also, I always thought it'd be nice if web sites could host a simple file,
> say we're talking XChat. The XChat web site can have an "Install now with
> PackageKit" icon, that links to a simple file that will be launched in
> PackageKit and tell it anything it needs to install XChat on any distro. The
> icon could be a stock thing for any web site to use, with Gnome 3.0 and
> PackageKit type branding.

Yup, that already exists. Checkout what catalog files are. See
http://www.packagekit.org/pk-faq.html#1-click-install for details.

> One last point, is there anything that could be done to encourage
> (admittedly closed source) game developers to Linux through PackageKit? Much
> like Steam and the respective App Stores have done for Apple and Android.

I think the problem is creating a universal binary often means
staticly linking in half the distro. This upsets the security people
considerably.

Richard.