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Request to update the featured apps #1583

Open soumyaDghosh opened 9 months ago

soumyaDghosh commented 9 months ago

The app center currently promotes some snaps that aren't in that good state, like

  1. Libreoffice => https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/libreoffice-slow-to-start/37966/12
  2. Steam => There are many issues with this snap

It would to better to promote the deb versions of these two snaps rather than snap versions.

Also, there are some snaps that are featured as ubuntu desktop part, but are very old in looks wise, and there exists snaps with same facility but with better UI, suiting the current Ubuntu UI, like

  1. Transmission => Fragments
  2. Shotwell => Loupe
  3. Gnome Mahajong and Mines => Too old-fashioned games, may be the supertuxkart and supertux can be promoted here
  4. teams-for-linux => this is unofficial, and the official one is retired, so, I think it may create problems.

Some music players, video players, rss readers, note taking apps can be promoted, like musicpod from our official community, clapper, newsflash, simplenote.

popey commented 8 months ago

This is not an issue for the App Centre application. It should be either a discussion on the Snapcraft forum or a pull request on https://github.com/canonical/section_ops, which is the actual repository that controls the featured applications. App Centre pulls that list from the store.

soumyaDghosh commented 8 months ago

Some parts of my issue are from section_ops, and I apologize to not clarify about it. But, not all of them are fetched from section ops. Specifically, the desktop related snaps part. It's kind of hard-coded in the snap itself.

https://github.com/ubuntu/app-center/blob/b135741b691cbf1da215302adb56c8451e7a2c94/packages/app_center/lib/src/snapd/snap_category_enum.dart#L68-L77

What can be the best place to discuss the default apps in the ubuntu desktop? Should I create a post in ubuntu discourse then?

popey commented 8 months ago

Erk! I'm sorry, but I hadn't noticed hard-wiring snap names in the application. We shouldn't do that in my opinion.

There's a mechanism for featured applications, and having that data maintained in a way that can be updated without rebuilding the entire application and publishing it is very helpful.

I know there was (maybe still is) a "hidden" section of the store, which is what you see at the end of the first-run GNOME initial setup on Ubuntu. It's not the same as the featured snaps you see in the "public" (unhidden) sections of the store.

In previous releases we would have done a full review of all the sections, much like you have kindly done. Then come up with any that should be replaced, and do a PR on each of the sections in the section_ops repo (and I guess in the snap_category_enum.dart file here to :shrug: - so the applications listed are appropriate for the new release.

We used to coordinate that internally at Canonical in the past, on the Snap Advocacy team. I don't know who does that now, or indeed if anyone does. I see Luke has done some PRs recently on the repo, so maybe he's best to get involved. Either on the snapcraft forum or the Ubuntu one. Probably Ubuntu, I imagine, as the release is coming, and it's directly affected.

soumyaDghosh commented 8 months ago

@popey Thanks a lot for your suggestion. I have posted about it here in the discourse. Please let me know your thoughts.

https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/revisit-to-the-default-apps-of-the-ubuntu-desktop-and-the-ubuntu-app-center/43159

Thank you :-)