Visual indicator for terminal-based software

[baimafeima]

It would be great to have a visual indicator for terminal-based software in the Software Center to be able to quickly distinguish between GUI and non-GUI applications.

In addition to that I would welcome Launch and Launch in terminal buttons to either launch software directly from the Software Center and/or to automatically launch the terminal with the appropriate application name.

[philipzae]

Would be good to have a visual indicator for GUI apps as well, as the list will also have non-application packages like libraries, debug symbols, development files, etc.

[baimafeima]

Yeah, maybe two (or more) labels: GUI and CLI?

Or a button to tick: Hide terminal-based software in the Settings tab? Some people may wish to exclusively work with terminal-based software while others prefer to avoid them altogether.

Clearer icons might also help to distinguish between different types of packages. This would be especially helpful when browsing through the Installed tab.

[m-delvalle]

Relevant:

74

[Justinzobel]

Seems like a good idea to me, perhaps a little terminal icon next to apps or in the info page to show that it's terminal-based and when you hover it gives a tooltip to explain it.

[baimafeima]

perhaps a little terminal icon next to apps or in the info page to show that it's terminal-based and when you hover it gives a tooltip to explain it.

Icons are good but I'm not very much for tooltips. Good icon design is an art and a well-designed icon is ideally good enough by itself and doesn't require any additional tooltips. Otherwise a simple text-based button would probably be better. This is also a suggestion for Budgie or Solus software in general: I hope that there is no need for a separate welcome app or tooltips. It seems to me that these are very often making up for design flaws which shouldn't be there in the first place (or a DE or software interface is not intuitive enough to require such additional features). The idea of hovering over a button and then waiting until a tooltip appears is too old-school, don't you think so? :D

[ikeydoherty]

Edit: TL;DR There are thousands of packages. How are we going to differentiate these, at the package level? AppStream? etc

[philipzae]

I'm not familiar with what data is found at the package level or the AppStream level, but ideally it would be something set at the AppStream level so that all users of AppStream data could benefit from the word done.

But if it were to be done just for Solus, then i guess it would have to be something set at the package

• GUI App: If the package has a .desktop file in it, then it would be tagged as a GUI app
• CLI App: This would likely have to be tagged on a per-package basis, but some could be automatically tagged if they are dependent on the ncurses package
• Debug: package name ends with '-debug'
• Development: package name ends with '-devel'
• Theme: package name ends with '-theme(-\w+)?'
• Font: package name ends with '-ttf'
• Library: package name starts with 'g?lib(?!reoffice)' or ends with 'lib(-\w+)?' or matches '^(acl|alsa|at-sp2-atk|open(al|exr|ldap|ssl)|orc|poppler|pulseaudio|py(atspi|cups)|python-|qpdf|qt5|readline|sbc|sdl\d|unixodbc)'

[ikeydoherty]

GUI App: If the package has a .desktop file in it, then it would be tagged as a GUI app

Unfortunately AppStream only tags stuff with .desktop, AppStream meta data, and without vetos .... Complete pain in the arse.

CLI App: This would likely have to be tagged on a per-package basis, but some could be automatically tagged if they are dependent on the ncurses package

AppStream knows CLI packages. Again, they have to provide AppStream data. Extra work

Library: package name starts with 'g?lib(?!reoffice)' or ends with 'lib(-\w+)?' or matches '^(acl|alsa|at-sp2-atk|open(al|exr|ldap|ssl)|orc|poppler|pulseaudio|py(atspi|cups)|python-|qpdf|qt5|readline|sbc|sdl\d|unixodbc)'

Sweet Jesus.. no.