Examine roadmaps for distros’ use of gnome-software
For the purposes of planning any possible architectural or maintenance changes to gnome-software, it would be useful to know how different distros use gnome-software, and how that usage is likely to change in the next 1-3 years (the period of time over which we’re going to have to maintain the next iteration of gnome-software).
(Distro list from here, up to date as of October 2020, plus Endless OS and Silverblue, and Alpine because they’ve proposed an apk plugin.)
List below updated on 2020-10-15 to take comments below into account.
Distributions which use gnome-software
- Alpine Linux/Postmarket OS (more detail): uses apk (not apt!) for everything; flatpak is available if you install
gnome-software-plugin-flatpak
- Arch Linux: uses pacman (via packagekit), seemingly for everything; flatpak is available, but not preferred (aiui)
- Debian: uses apt for everything; flatpak is available, but not preferred (aiui)
- Endless OS: uses OSTree for the base OS (via eos-updater), flatpak for UI apps; this is unlikely to change in the next few years
- Fedora (more detail): uses dnf for everything, flatpak apps are shipped in default install and going to be increasingly used in future, but there’s no roadmap for obsoleting package-based apps
- Mageia (more detail): uses dnf (via packagekit) for everything; flatpak is available but no repos are configured by default; no plans to prefer anything other than dnf in the future
- MX Linux: uses apt, seemingly for everything
- openSUSE (more detail): uses zypp (via packagekit) for everything; flatpak is available, but not preferred and no repos are configured by default; this is unlikely to change in the next few years
- RHEL/CentOS: uses dnf for OS, flatpak for faster-moving UI apps; this is unlikely to change in the next few years
- Silverblue: uses OSTree for the base OS, rpm-ostree for layering additional RPM packages on top, and flatpak for UI apps; explicit assertion that ‘package layering is generally done from the command line’; this is likely to evolve in the next few years, but the direction is uncertain
- Ubuntu: uses apt + snaps, emphasis seems to be shifting to preferring snaps for apps; apt for OS updates; uses gnome-software rebranded as ‘Ubuntu Software’
Distributions which don’t use gnome-software
(For info only)
- Gentoo: uses portage for everything; flatpak is available, but not preferred (aiui)
- Linux Mint: uses apt + flatpaks, emphasis seems to be shifting to preferring flatpaks for apps; apt for OS updates
- Pop!_OS (more detail): uses Pop!_Shop, which is derived from Elementary’s AppCenter.
I am only really familiar with Endless OS, Fedora and Debian, so I may have made mistakes here — especially with the longer-term outlook for different distributions. Feedback and corrections welcome. In a week’s time, I’ll collate the data we have and draw some conclusions about things like the need for offline updates or which plugins we need to support.