This document will evolve over time to indicate what goals and use cases gnome-software targets at the moment.
- Allow people to find apps by browsing or search:
- a specific app that they're looking for, or
- apps in a particular category, or with particular functionality that they require
- Allow people to effectively inspect and appraise apps before they install them (screenshots, descriptions, ratings, comments, metadata)
- Allow people to view which apps are installed and remove them
- Present a positive view of the app ecosystem
- Reinforce the sense that there are lots of high quality apps
- Encourage people to engage with that ecosystem, both as users and as contributors
- When browsing, present and promote the best apps that are available
- Facilitate accidental discovery of great apps
- Handle software updates. Make software updates as little work for users as possible. To include: apps, OS updates (PackageKit, eos, rpm-ostree), firmware
- Support multiple software repositories, defined by both the distributor and users.
- Show which repos are configured. Allow them to be added/removed.
- Handle cases where the same app can be installed from multiple sources.
- OS upgrades
- Hardware driver installation
- Input method installation
- Respond to application queries for software (apps, codecs, languages)
- Offline and metered connections
- OS updates end of life
- App end of life
- Not a package manager front-end
- Not all repos are equal
- Not all apps are equal