Are you still on F43? My observation I made on F44 and as I understand the OP is also talking about F44.
Thunderbird RPM works great!
There a re probably a lot of tickets as it is one of the most popular email applications.
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I believe you, however why is it not visible in the Software App from Gnome in F44. Do you use it on F44 and did you check if you can see the rpm version in the software app (I guess this fact that it is not visible is the question here)?
I’ll have to come back on this tomorrow, as it was checked on a Fedora Workstation within a VM I don’t have access to right now.
Is the Thunderbird RPM available in the repos on F44?
Definately. I use it on 44 Sway.
As this is a rant, I gotta say I would not only give up on Gnome Software but @lendenu consider giving up on Gnome altogether!
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Unfortunately I can not see it … as the OP stated, in Software. That is also why i made the comment about the bug reports.
Ok, the question here is still why we do have to move from Software-App to dnf if we want the RPM version of Thunderbird. That is the Rant here. My question to you @theprogram, have you checked in gnome software too, as you state you use Sway?
Please folks, lets try to read carefully here. @lendenu is longer with us and I do understand his complain, while observing that we probably not all talk about the same thing? This might frustrates him additionally, telling him how he has to work, while we user others setups as he.
Gnome Software F44 > I can not see Thunderbird as RPM.
Dnf > the package is there as always in dnf when RPM packages are available.
To show that something is not correct with Thunderbird, I also show the screenshots from package and bhodhi; F44 has as stable V149 and testing 148? On bodhi for every Fedora version it has a slightly different Thunderbird version.
I won’t check myself, so I asked on Matrix, and people there can’t see Thunderbird as RPM in Gnome Software or KDE Discover.
Must be a problem with the appimage or or new update to packit or something?
I still not could figure out why I cant see the RPM of thunderbird in F44 Gnoime Software.
However I got a hint on Redit that might the desktop/appdata is incorrect.
Only apps with appdata/desktop files show in software (or kde discover).
Apps have heuristics to show whether they are the same app or not, but if they are named differently.
Here an article how to fix this data:
How to get your application to show up in GNOME Software | Christian F.K. Schaller
@lendenu if you have the joy to check that we could make a ticket if the data is wrong. So Thunderbird will show up again.
I would do it, however i do have no Thunderbird installed.
package-maintainers might see this and can comment on it.
When I chimed in some time ago in this thread, I really didn’t mean to admonish @lendenu about his experiences. So, apologies to him for that!
The problem I tried to convey is that Gnome Software has a long history of issues, of various types. I am a person who used various editions of Gnome for many years. It’s a great project, but it definitely has a tremendous amount of inertia resisting user-facing changes.
Sometimes it really is best to learn to cope—in the case of Software, just dropping it altogether, which is what I chose to do. And, if anyone finds the effort to manage the various Extensions, Tweaks, Dconf, etc, in Gnome, which are all potentially buggy, they probably do want to consider moving on to a completely different DE.
Back to the specific case of Gnome Software from the Gnome Project perspective, there’s the additional consideration that across all the distributions that use Gnome, the application has to interface with so many distro-specific package managers, in addition to other application tools like flatpak and snap, so I get that that’s not trivial to do.
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My opinion is I don’t complain of any software in two conditions:
- I have at least one alternative
- I am not forced into the said software
The first condition is met with Gnome Software because I can still use DNF.
The second condition is not met because when I install Fedora Gnome Software comes by default AND there isn’t any way to disable it because it obviously doesn’t have any “enable-disable” option AND it is requested in some complicated way via systemd during boot. Please don’t write “systemd and related technologies are actually simple”. It depends on what you need. I just need to boot my PC and the less I touch it, the better. Just checking what systemd does at boot is enough to give me an headache.
I don’t like it but even worse, I do not understand it. Because you design a tool in that way only when you do want to enforce it and you want to make it difficult as much as possible. Why? Do the developer(s) hate people? Does he (them) think we are all idiots and we need to be saved from ourselves?
About uninstalling: If I have to uninstall something from the default install first I get annoyed then I think that the distribution is not for me. Here we come to Fedora. I am sad because more time passes and more I am like pushed away because decisions are made and somehow enforced on me (and everybody else). Don’t get me started about what is “new” and “cool” these days. And who needs those “new” and “cool” things.
About Gnome at large. It took some time to get used to it coming from the “traditional” desktop. The reason for moving to Gnome is again it was somehow enforced by making anything else in the GTK “field”, legacy. Nowadays there are two options that seems to have a long term future, that is KDE Plasma and Gnome. Anything else is either “niche” or “one man project” and it means both following changes trying to deal with all the given issues and a probable death of the project soon or later. And I do need some GTK applications, so I am back to Gnome.
One of the things I mentioned to you earlier in this thread is that if you’re dissatisfied with things in Gnome, then the place to get the most traction and feedback is likely going to be in the forums at gnome.org.
I used Gnome for many years myself, but due to my own frustrations with it over that entire time, I moved to the KDE Plasma Edition when I bought a new laptop last summer. I’ve learned almost nothing about the details of how it works—everything I’ve needed to adjust so far, I’ve been able to do via one place: System Settings. I’m fully satisfied with it.
You can still do that from a KDE Plasma install! Just install the applications you want, and dnf will take care of fulfilling its dependencies, including those from GTK libraries.
Good luck!
I don’t like it but even worse, I do not understand it. Because you design a tool in that way only when you do want to enforce it and you want to make it difficult as much as possible. Why? Do the developer(s) hate people? Does he (them) think we are all idiots and we need to be saved from ourselves?
While this is theoretically possible, I seriously doubt it’s anyone’s actual intent. This is the open source world, where volunteers take time out of their lives to build the software they’re passionate about. These volunteers have ideas about what they want their software to do that doesn’t align with your idea of what it should do, and that’s absolutely ok. Nothing is stopping you from just not using their software in that case, or better yet, creating the software that you’re passionate about and works the way you want it to.
It’s fair to say that most people don’t have the time or the inclination to drop everything and build a better version of GNOME Software, but in this case you’re in luck. It already exists: Bazaar.
Still, I get your frustration. There are so many moving parts and so many possible workflows and so many opinions about the “right” way of designing software that most projects of this nature are never really finished, they just continuously evolve. You described this as “guerilla tactics” above, and while I don’t think you’re being intentionally disingenuous with that wording, I have to call you out on this because it’s just not accurate. Nobody upstream is sitting around coming up with a plan to ruin your day with a change to GNOME Software.
I gave up the idea of having Gnome Software available when needed but not running in background at any boot, for some reason it must be always running. Now I am going to give up the idea I am allowed to chose which repository I check with it because for some reason I must have “default” flatpak enabled. My guess is tomorrow I will give up the idea of the “immutabile system” from above and “anything user” as flatpak.
The only reasonable solution to your complaints in this thread is to just uninstall GNOME Software and get it over with. It sounds like you want the stability offered by Fedora Atomic, but I get the impression from other parts of this thread that you’re actually running Fedora Workstation, which is the wrong approach if you want an immutable system.
If that’s the case and I’ve understood your requirements then what I would do in your shoes is the following:
- Backup all of your data
- Download and install Fedora Silverblue
- Remove GNOME Software:
rpm-ostree uninstall gnome-software gnome-software-rpm-ostree
- Install the Flathub remote:
mkdir -p /etc/flatpak/remotes.d
curl --retry 3 -Lo \
"/etc/flatpak/remotes.d/flathub.flatpakrepo" \
"https://dl.flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo"
flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub /etc/flatpak/remotes.d/flathub.flatpakrepo
flatpak remote-modify --enable flathub
- Optionally, replace all installed Fedora flatpaks with their Flathub equivalents and remove the Fedora remote
flatpak install --reinstall --noninteractive --assumeyes flathub $(flatpak list --app-runtime=org.fedoraproject.Platform --columns=application | tail -n +1)
flatpak uninstall --unused --assumeyes --noninteractive
flatpak remote-delete --force fedora
flatpak remote-delete --force fedora-testing
- Optionally install Bazaar:
flatpak install io.github.kolunmi.Bazaar - Proceed with your life free from the curse of GNOME Software
I speak from experience about this workflow as this is basically exactly what I do on my own Silverblue machines.
Bazaar is only for Flatpaks though, right? It doesn’t (try to) provide a frontend to dnf operations like GNOME Software does.
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Yeah exactly. Choose the right tool for the job: GUI apps in a GUI app store, CLI tools from a CLI package manager
Ha, I do it all from the CLI, Flatpaks included 
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I am also on Silverblue, and it’s actually Fedora Atomic where I find that GNOME Software does its job pretty well: no issues with poor handling of PackageKit challenges, automatic updates both for the OSTree image as well as for Flatpaks working without issues etc.
But then again, Fedora Atomic is not to everyone’s liking. Remembering other posts, the OP prefers the traditional, non-atomic Fedora desktops.
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Look @lendenu it is good that you share your toughs with us. That you ask things to be fixed and why things not work.
However sometimes it is important also to see the effort which is done, and then it is time to stop making bad vibes. Did you see about the boot ISO error from the workstation, that @vekruse is searching how to fix this? He made tests and discusses them on Bugzilla.
My link about the Thunderbird RPM version did you see and read? When a app/desktop information of a software is wrong/incomplete, it not appears in Gnome Software. Now if you want that Thunderbird appears, you can instead of continuing complaining also help to investigate where the error is. If you find it report it to the developer and propose to change it. That is opensource spirit!
As mentioned above a source of failure might be the app/desktop description. Instead of sending him away from gnome-software, show him how to debug a problem and encourage him to report the Issues to the developer. Just this way , we will also in future have the choice of different desktops.
I do appreciate that you made the two other topics in ask fedora where we do try to search a solution or a better workaround. I also agree that just telling you to use an other software is wrong while you state that you can not understand why it is not working. If you show this also in your title, you might attract more the Gnome Users instead of the KDE users which try to tell you to leave Gnome because they believe it is nonsense.
Please Folks, Opensource is a choice of individuals, respect individuals and let them their preferences. Show them how to make their preferences they have better, while help learn them how to debug and report issues.
Proposals of other software and your personal meaning please keep back till the OP is asking for!!
I don’t see any KDE user saying that here.
In fact FWIW I’d say that KDE Discover tends to cause similar frustrations to GNOME Software.
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@pg-tips the tendency to tell someone it’s own preferences is bigger than the motivation to help to make the own preferences of others better.
The OP clearly states why he not wants to change and or just use DNF. He not asks for preferences of others.
Btw, @pg-tips I liked your answer/comment
I also started to use Flatpak cli. I would appreciate when someone shares his notes how to solve specific tasks in the cli. In this case here, how to find out which is the default registry and how to change the default or set filters and conditions. In case of the OP’s question, can you combine dnf and flatpak in a script to search for an app, which shows if it is also available as RPM ? (this would be a real alternative to the gnome-software problem the OP has).
This would be active help for the OP. So he would get the confidence also to help to debug, find out why, things not appear in gnome-software. That is the point I try to make here.
flatpak remotes will show you the registries in order of priority, so the default one is the first one in the list.
I don’t really use filters myself, so for that I’ll just point to the documentation (look for the “–filter” option here). Others may have a more “practical” angle on it.
Very crudely (someone could make the output prettier), something like:
printf "dnf\n===" ; dnf search thunderbird ; printf "flatpak\n=======" ; flatpak search thunderbird
which gives for me:
dnf
===Updating and loading repositories:
Repositories loaded.
Matched fields: name (exact), summary
thunderbird.x86_64 Mozilla Thunderbird mail/newsgroup client
Matched fields: name, summary
thunderbird-librnp-rnp.x86_64 OpenPGP implementation for Thunderbird based on RNP
Matched fields: summary
external-editor-revived.x86_64 Thunderbird extension that allows editing emails in external editors such as Vim
sequoia-octopus-librnp.x86_64 Reimplementation of RNP's interface using Sequoia for use with Thunderbird
flatpak
=======Name Description Application ID Version Branch Remotes
Thunderbird Thunderbird is a free and open source email, ne… org.mozilla.Thunderbird 140.10.2esr stable flathub
Betterbird A better version of Thunderbird ….betterbird.Betterbird 140.10.1esr-bb22 stable flathub
Birdtray System tray new mail notification for Thunderbi… com.ulduzsoft.Birdtray 1.11.4 stable flathub
DavMail Office 365 and Exchange gateway org.davmail.DavMail 6.7.0 stable flathub
Proton Mai… Seamlessly encrypts and decrypts your mail as i… …mail.protonmail-bridge 3.24.2 stable flathub
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