Major changes are coming to the next Ubuntu LTS

Nov 5, 2015 08:26 GMT  ·  By

Canonical is looking to make some substantial changes to the Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus), and the developers are preparing to drop Ubuntu Software Center and replace it with GNOME Software.

There have been a lot of discussions about the Ubuntu Software Center ever since the Ubuntu MATE devs decided to drop it from their distro. It might not seem like a big deal for many seasoned users, but a centralized friendly software center is really important for new users.

This is not the first discussion about the future of Ubuntu Software Center, but it’s the first one that actually brings about its end. Canonical is now in the middle of the Ubuntu Developer Summit, and one of the topics of discussion was Unity 7. It turns out that the road of the Ubuntu Software Center in the Ubuntu project is now coming to an end.

Ubuntu Software Center will be gone from Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

The new Ubuntu 16.04 will be an LTS release, and that means developers need to pay extra attention to what they are doing. One of their goals is to shed all the dead weight that’s been piling on for the past couple of years.

One of the problems seems to be the Ubuntu Software Center, which is almost unmaintained, with the exception of a few security problems that have been dealt with. This problem is being solved by dropping the software completely.

The replacement will be GNOME Software and Will Cooke, the Ubuntu Desktop Manager, said that they would be working on a way to keep all the reviews, ratings, and screenshots from the Ubuntu Software Center.

This seems to be the end of the road for this old application, but it’s likely that no one will really miss it. Most of the users have been complaining about its poor performance for a while now, so any change in this regard will be welcome by the community.

You can see the entire discussion below, and you can jump ahead to the 31-minute mark for the talk about Ubuntu Software Center.