Software Repositories dialog inadequate for Debian
- GNOME Software 45.beta
- Debian Unstable
As suggested at 8188310f, Debian will currently restore the patch to use their own software repositories management dialog (software-properties-gtk) instead of GNOME Software's. And I'm filing this bug to discuss.
GNOME Software's built-in software repositories dialog is not designed for Debian's repository layout. Debian's tool, although not following current GNOME designs, allows enabling and disabling individual components of the Debian repo in addition to adding, enabling and disabling third-party repositories. Debian's tool is a fork of a tool written by Canonical for Ubuntu. (Ubuntu Desktop uses an alternative app, the Snap Store, as its default software store, but some Ubuntu desktop "flavors" currently use basically Debian's version of GNOME Software and therefore will still use the Ubuntu version of software-properties-gtk).
The original bug that inspired this change was #2231 (closed) about not being able to easily disable Flathub after manually enabling it. Flatpak is not installed by default on Debian currently. The official Flathub instructions require using the command line to enable Flathub. Notably, this feature has been this way for many years and that single bug might have been the only request for change.
Screenshots
By the way, the older gpk-prefs (from gnome-packagekit) is similarly unable to handle Debian's repository preferences adequately: