As some of you know, I’m working for Blue Systems, during the recent months it’s been on improving some bits of muon and developing a new front-end that we’ve called Muon Discover.
The idea is simple. Haven’t you ever found a tool that was perfect for your need but you only found it after some time stumbling upon it on the net? When considering to install an application, don’t you wonder sometimes if it’s really worth it? Or if it’s actually what you’re looking for.
We are trying to address these areas in this new front-end we called Muon Discover. There you’ll be able to search applications, to navigate through categories and top5 lists and figure out what they are meant for by seeing the screenshots and reviews.
Furthermore, Muon Discover will let you manage the different sources of software you have and manage the applications you’ve already installed in the past but you don’t want anymore.
Here you can see a video that shows a bit what it does.
If anybody is interested, you can try it from our cyber-stuff PPA.
And last but not least, thanks to Jonathan Thomas, Muon maintainer who was really open to new ideas in all this process!
As always, I’m welcome to feedback. Please give us feedback, we need to know what it feels like to use it with your hands! 🙂
If it isn’t the plan already I think that most if not all the functionality should be merged with Software Center. It would lovely if KDE had very advanced software center that would rival its competitiors in ease of use, speed and looks. Package management shouldn’t be divided any futher; having one application for advanced operations and one for “everybody” should be enough.
It’s quite unfortunate again that this awesome tech is limited to one distribution family.
About Blue Systems, does it employ three KDE developers now or what? I’m loosing track on these things :p
I think that appset-qt from Chakra Linux embeds the application’s website too, it can very useful !
But the URL may have to be given in the package, so it may not be possible here. But it could make Muon one of the most complete package managers (even more then now ;))
@hoho. true, on the other hand when you work on improving an operating system you really look into fixing the problem you have first. In any case it’s something that can be discussed in the future.
Regarding BlueSystems, there actually are more than 3 KDE developers employed :P. Keep tuned, awesome things are being baked!
@L Yes, that could be something really easy to add, although I’m not sure how much better than just a link it is.
I did try Muon-Discover from the PPA above… thoughts? I realise this is a new project and understand much will likely change as this matures but on my desktop with a custom theme installed, Muon-Discover would not follow my theme settings apart from white text. So while I agree that it is best to concentrate on the brief for the project before looking to merge or add new features, I also think that developing app’s that respect the visual concept that sets KDE environments apart from the rest is also important. I’m not a developer, but “starting out on the wrong foot” in whatever aspect often means even more work later. If this (consistency) is something you have yet to implement then I gratefully ‘eat my words’. Either way I look forward to testing again some time down the track. Regards…
@apol I think that the website is one of the best ways to discover an application or to know it is the right choice … maybe a link is enough, but when I used appset-qt I used the website view a lot.
I tried installing from the ppa and it gives me this error
dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/muon-discover_1.4.0~aa1-3~1516~precise1_amd64.deb (–unpack):
trying to overwrite ‘/usr/share/icons/hicolor/48×48/apps/muondiscover.png’, which is also in package muon 1.4.0~aa1-3~1516~precise1
Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils …
Processing triggers for hicolor-icon-theme …
Errors were encountered while processing:
/var/cache/apt/archives/muon-discover_1.4.0~aa1-3~1516~precise1_amd64.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
@z3r0d3rp true! just fixed it. It should be in the next version of the package, when you upgrade. Sorry about that!!
@L will think about it 🙂
@dennis regarding integration, you’re perfectly right. It’s a know problem that we’re looking into fixing, still left to find the best awesome alternative. If you’re curious, you can see that there’s a discover branch using desktop components. We didn’t use those because it’s not all that ready yet but definitely an option.
He probado Muon Discover y la interfaz me recuerda mucho a Plasma Active. Yo propongo añadir un botón entre “Discover” e “Installed” llamado “Categories” que dé acceso a las categorÃas de las aplicaciones y a las clasificaciones de popularidad. En “Discover” pondrÃa un “slideshow” de mayor tamaño, que proporcione más información. Debajo pondrÃa iconos de aplicaciones destacadas (como las novedades o los más descargados), con un panel como el que se muestra al entrar en una categorÃa, pero agrupando por tipos. Tampoco estarÃa mal otro botón para abrir un modo “gestor de paquetes”, podrÃa llamarse “Advanced” o algo similar. Si no te convencen mis ideas, te recomiendo buscar inspiración en gestores de software veteranos 😉 .
Sorry to reply in Spanish, it was faster than writting in English.
Regards.
@Leumas First, thanks for taking your time to try it 🙂 really appreciated.
Regarding the categories button, I already had that at some point: http://proli.net/meu/netrunner/muon-installer-qml-5.ogv Didn’t feel that well.
Regarding the package manager, you’ll always be able to use the regular muon. I think it’s best if we split these features, otherwise it would end up a bit bloated.
Anyhow, I think it’s easy to see references from other software centers and application stores already 🙂