I would never understand why users don't like USC

Jul 28, 2015 15:26 GMT  ·  By

Ubuntu MATE recently decided to drop the Ubuntu Software Center and it will no longer be available with the upcoming 15.10 Alpha 2 release. This is interesting in itself, but this editorial is about another aspect. From the looks of it, a very large part of the Ubuntu and Linux community really hates the Ubuntu Software Center.

In case you didn't already know this, the Ubuntu Software Center is a tool in Ubuntu distros that acts both as a store and a package manager. It's one of the first stores that made its way into an operating system and there are even some rumors around that the Mac App Store copied the Software Center from Ubuntu.

It's been around for a long time, but Canonical  hasn't really invested a lot of time and resources into it. It's now in a sort of maintenance mode. No new features are being implemented, but any security issues are being taken care of.

The interesting thing is that no one has anything good to say about the Ubuntu Software Center, despite the fact that it doesn't have any major drawback. Sure, it isn't as fast as we would like and it doesn't have the best UI around, but it's not all that bad. I find it difficult to understand why people don't like it.

If you are an Ubuntu user and you don't like to use the terminal in order to install applications, then you will have to use the Ubuntu Software Center, but it's pretty much like anything else. You double click the .deb file, USC opens up, you enter the password, and you install the apps. It works 10 times out of 10, unless the application has some dependencies that are not in the repositories.

If you choose the terminal, you might have to do a few extra steps to finish an installation. For all intents and purposes, using the Ubuntu Software Center is the easiest way of doing things.

Replacements are not coming too soon

At least one third-party replacement was spotted over the years. It's called App Grid and is faster and seems to be more efficient than the Ubuntu Software Center, but last time we checked, it wasn't open source, and that's really a problem.

A lot of people have expressed their happiness at the news that Ubuntu MATE won't use Ubuntu Software Center anymore, but none of them has said what their problem with it was. I, for one, can't find any serious issue that would make me say "this has got to go away."

So, this is your chance to express that hate towards Ubuntu Software Center and tell us why you don't like it and what bugs bother you the most with the application. Just go nuts in the comments below.