What is Reddit's opinion of GNOME Software?

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The tricky part is finding the packages you've installed which aren't dependencies. One useful too for this is deborphan. Try deborphan --all-packages --no-show-section| cut -d: -f1 to get just a list of packages.

You can then sudo apt remove or purge the ones you don't need, paying careful attention to what will be removed. When you've finished, sudo apt autoremove should remove any leftover former dependent packages.

Gnome Software provides a limited graphical interface to package management.

What and how are you trying to download?

Are you in Firefox trying to download a file from the internet?

Or are you in the little app store thing (looks like this), trying to download and install a program?

Or are you trying to download system updates?

Or something else...?

>I'd rather not be constantly logging into root to use sudo to install programs.

That's not how it works. Installing most software on Linux is analogous to using the Google Play Store (e.g. for Ubuntu), but everything is free and there is no crapware, spyware, adware, malware, scams, etc.. Yes, you have to provide a password to install stuff (unless you are logged in as root), but you have to do that on Windows too. Dependencies are managed automatically and transparently (unlike on Windows).

Oh, and if you are logged in as root you don't need to use sudo. Being logged in as root the same as being logged in as administrator in Windows -you ARE root, so you don't need use sudo (superuser do) obtain root privileges. But you probably can't log in as root anyway (as it is a security risk).

Not sure how long it's been since you've tried it. If you use one with Gnome, it's actually far simpler then Windows. In fact, it's far too simple imo.

They also typically come with Gnome Software center (or just called "Software"), which you can think of as your app store. You just go to the updates tab and just press update. Or you can hit the three-dots (settings) button in the corner and check "Enable auto-updates" and you're done.

Linux itself isn't inherently complex, it entirely depends on the desktop-environment installed which varies your experience widely.

Not everything is available in Gnome Software, and it's roundly disliked.

dnf is my tool of choice to manage software.

I would probably ask here: https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Software

HTH and good luck.

I'm not an expert, sorry. Better have a read here (they have an IRC channel and there is a list of developers with e-mails, you may contact them).

Gnome Software is just designed for average users who use GUI and want to have an AppStore-like tool.

The GUIs usually show all of the same stuff that can be accessed from package manager commands.

Except if you use GNOME Software. GNOME Software and the old Ubuntu Software Center for some reason excludes many important things from showing, just because they didn't come with an icon or whatever dumb criteria Canonical and GNOME team decided on.

But with other GUI package manager frontends, the only time you'll need to drop to the command line is to compile something manually.

One important gotcha: don't get confused by tar.gz. They're just the equivalent of zip files. Often, you don't need to install something manually at all (always check for repos, third party PPAs, or distro-specific packaging scripts that can build the package for you), but if you do, understand what you're actually downloading. If it has a file called README.md, that includes instructions for manually compiling. If it's just a few files and an ELF executable, it's already compiled and you can just run it right off the bat and maybe manually add an .desktop entry for it.

Also, /r/linuxquestions

> noltre l'utente medio non ha voglia di dovere aprire il terminale per potere installare aggiornamenti o app,

E basta con ste cazzate.

Con packagekit che esiste ormai da tre anni si aggiorna tutto da GUI ora