Hello, valued development team and community members. I recently decided to switch to Fedora. With my intermediate-level Linux knowledge, I’ve tried and used many distributions, and I think Fedora Workstation might be the closest to satisfying me. However, there’s one issue. although I like the Gnome interface very much, I find some customization options lacking. I’ll ask my questions and provide feedback on this separately. My current concern is that I’m not satisfied with the Gnome Software Center. Is it possible to change the store? Or if I delete the store, will I encounter problems with system and application updates? I would appreciate your support, opinions, and thoughts on this matter.
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Welcome to Fedora @timurmurat
Can you be more specific what you dislike or what is missing?
If you have a basic installation you might want to activate some more repositories to get a bigger range of Software.
Have a look in the software app on the top it has a so called “Hamburger Menu” >> Software Repository.
Thank you for your interest and assistance. The Gnome Software has several issues. Firstly, there are problems with download and installation speeds. Additionally, the store is often slow to open and pages load slowly. Furthermore, there are visual issues, and the interface is quite inconvenient to use. I have been interested in Linux operating systems for about 6 years, and the last time I used the Gnome Software was 3 years ago. I saw today that it still has the same problems, which is very disappointing. Gnome loses a lot of points for providing such poor store support for such a well-designed interface.
Understandable, you’re not the only one with major speed issues in GNOME Software.
There arent many alternatives in Fedora, unfortunately. Unless there’s something wonderful I’m missing, your choices are:
- KDE Discover - similar in features to Software, with more usable speed. The best option, if it works. There might be issues with dependencies or theming.
- COSMIC Store - really nice, small and fast, and looks a little more GNOME-y than Discover. The only real problem here is that it’s not finished yet, so there are still lots of bugs and missing features. In a few months (or maybe even weeks) this will be a lot easier to recommend.
- dnfdragora - only rpms, doesnt support flatpak. It’s essentially the Fedora equivalent to Synaptic on Debian/Ubuntu, so it has a more austere interface, doesnt have screenshots, reviews etc. In my experience rather buggy, too.
- Warehouse - not designed to be an app store, but it does technically allow you to graphically install and uninstall flatpaks, and update or downgrade them on an individual basis, so in conjunction with dnfdragora could make for a very… inconvenient duo.
No, you should be fine. Discover and COSMIC Store use packagekit and flatpak underneath, just like Software. Having multiple (or zero) stores in the same time (or at different times) should not cause problems as far as I know.
If you like, perhaps uninstall Software or install the others using dnf, so that you can use the history undo feature if in the future you might want to forget it ever happened and restore things the way they were before.
Do let us know how things go 
.
If you’re in search of performance, you could just disable Automatic Software Updates and Automatic Update Notifications in GNOME Software’s Preferences, and only use the corresponding (powerful and efficient) command line tools:
dnffor RPM’sflatpakfor Flatpaks.
GNOME Software would still be there, if ever needed, to check screenshots and reviews of available apps.
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Thank you for your detailed response. It seems like I can use the other stores you mentioned besides the Gnome Software. That’s a sufficient solution for me, but I have a more organized idea and a question in mind. As you know, Fedora, like Ubuntu, doesn’t have a dedicated software update application. Can such an application or a similar one be installed on Fedora? Would it work on Fedora? In Ubuntu, you can get both system software and application updates through this application, which would be enough for me, as I can download and install many applications through the browser. At least the applications I use can be obtained this way.
Thank you for your input. The method you suggested could be an alternative, but I think it would be my 3rd or 4th choice. While it might not be a major issue in the short term, the manual nature of the process could lead to time wastage and frustration in the long run.
I agree that one should be able to perform specific tasks and configurations (such as software installations, updates etc) via GUI apps. And I like that GNOME provides this via it’s GNOME Software app. Besides possible performance drawbacks, I think there is also a perception factor. E.g. when one hits the Refresh button on the Updates tab, the process seems to take longer (than a corresponding CLI command, for example) only because there is no verbose progress indication of what is happening.
However,
actually the time wastage and possible frustration is only happening during the learning phase. One comfortable, you’ll notice real performance gains from using CLI for managing installations, updates and repositories. Many frequent users of this forum will confirm that.
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I don’t know of any app which only does updates. Well, maybe dnfdragora-updater would sort of fit the bill, but that won’t work for flatpaks.
Not really. Entering flatpak update -y && pkcon update -y will update rpms and flatpaks in one nice go (pkcon uses packagekit like the GUI stores so you dont need to enter a password). Actually, now that I think about it, you could create a custom launcher so that you press a single button which executes this command, essentially doing what Ubuntu’s updater would do. Or a keyboard shortcut.
So for example, you could create a text file called fedup.desktop in /usr/share/applications containing the following:
[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=Update Software
Terminal=true
Exec=sh -c "flatpak update -y && pkcon update -y"
Comment=Update RPMs and Flatpaks
Icon=view-refresh-symbolic
Categories=System;
Then you should have an icon in your app menu that says Update Software, and clicking it should open a terminal, immediately run the updates and close when finished.
And of course feel free to remove the -ys if you like to review updates before applying them.
Thank you, but I think this method is a bit more complex, and I honestly don’t fully understand how to do it. If there’s a detailed documentation on this, please point me in the right direction. Actually, I’m considering giving detailed feedback to the GNOME development team about this. I think we, as the Fedora community, should voice our demand for a better application store. Fedora is a very modern and established distribution, but it’s clear that it needs some important refinements.
Well I don’t know of any links to give you, but basically every app you see in GNOME’s dash or overview screen is there because there is a .desktop file in /usr/share/applications which tells GNOME the name of the app, a short description, what icon to use, what command to run when opening the app, etc.
So, if you want a quick way to update everything on your system without using the slow app stores, you could save yourself the trouble of typing a command in a terminal by creating your own .desktop file, so that you can click a single button in GNOME which updates everything automatically as soon as you click it.
- open a text editor and paste the following in a new file:
[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=Update Software
Terminal=true
Exec=sh -c "flatpak update -y && pkcon update -y"
Comment=Update RPMs and Flatpaks
Icon=view-refresh-symbolic
Categories=System;
- Name this file whatever you want as long as it ends in
.desktop, egfedup.desktop. - open a terminal and enter
sudo desktop-file-install fedup.desktop - There should now be a new icon in the overview.
Some more info about the .desktop file:
- The
Exec=line gives the command that is run when the icon is clicked.flatpak updateobviously updates flatpaks, but on its own it would ask for confirmation, so the-yoption is a way of saying yes in advance. - Similarly
pkcon updateupdates all your RPMs (sudo dnf upgradewould do essentially the same thing, but that would require entering a password). &&tells sh to do the pkcon update once the flatpak update has been completed (when i tried it earlier, for some reason if i put pkcon first, then flatpak wouldn’t run at all).Terminal=truemeans that the command will run in a visible terminal, so that you can see the progress.Terminal=falsemakes everything happen invisibly in the background.
install the package desktop-file-utils So you can use commands like desktop-file-validate
I used it here once:
yeah, that helped. The package is already installed on the KDE spin, probably workstation too.
I’ll give the methods you’ve provided another look and reiterate my appreciation for your input. I’ll certainly try them out when I get a chance. Nevertheless, I think it would be valuable to establish a unified opinion on feedback and explore the option of a more visually engaging and user-friendly store, whether it’s the Gnome Software Center or a different marketplace. Fedora undoubtedly deserves a custom store that could showcase the distro’s flagship software. Considering the inconsistent state of stores across various distributions, Fedora could truly differentiate itself in this regard.
A custom store sounds to me like a waste of time. Better to do the work upstream (in the desktop environments) so other distros can benefit. So fixing GNOME Software, improving KDE Discover and finishing COSMIC Store is the way to go imo. Anyway, I think the COSMIC Store will serve as a solid cross-desktop solution, once it’s done.
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Thank you for sharing your thoughts. To build a better Fedora together, we should first be helpful and then make requests.
Fedora’s approach is to integrate upstream projects as much as possible, and this is one of the reasons many users prefer Fedora, myself included.
With this approach in mind, GNOME Software Center is the obvious GUI package manager for the Fedora editions/spins shipped with the GNOME desktop.
As you can notice from this thread already, it’s hard to get a unified opinion on how a GUI package manager should work. And while the GNOME team sticks to its design principles, they do take input from its users too.
Besides performance, what is it that you are missing from GNOME Software Center?
First of all, a more visual and detailed interface would be much more user-friendly. Additionally, a detailed update screen should be provided. Furthermore, the performance issue you mentioned should definitely not be overlooked. While I’m not a highly specialized user, I’ve used many Linux distributions and seen numerous stores. Although the Gnome interface is fantastic, it’s fair to say that the store is quite mediocre. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
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There are quite a few issues open on GNOME Software’s issue tracker, some of them being enhancement requests. You might want to add your own too.
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