I have found nothing that matches Software Boutique anywhere else. It was perfect. You could select all your software and have it installed with one click, all at once.
Has anyone found anything else that does this?
Such a shame it was dropped.
I use Synaptic for the purpose.
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Hi, @moggers and welcome to the Ubuntu MATE Community!
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True dat, but Synaptic basically assumes that you know most of the package or app names, in which case apt or apt-get is even better.
App Center in my somewhat limited experience with 24.04.3, is much better than the Boutique ever was for me. Perhaps the āapply all at onceā was the root of the boutique problems, combined with the need to retype the root password on ābig and slowā installations like Chrome.
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I use Synaptic as well! It is an indispensable tool!
However ... I love the concept of the "Software Boutique" as a mechanism to showcase "quality" software, helping those "window shoppers" to land with selections that, by "coralling" new users towards a more select set of tools, ensures larger User bases that motivates developers to "stick with it" and continue the evolution/improvement of those tools, for the benefit of the Community at large!
I believe a tool or service that offers a "curated" list of applications adapted to various fields of activity, incorporating at least a "vetting" of what is offered at large, possibly including a "Admin-recommended" label for some, in parallel with a sense of level of actual usage (I know this one is hard to measure/gauge), is indispensable as an attractant, and a selling point, for prospective Linux adopters looking to choose which Distro should become their landing pad!
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A plus for Software Boutique was that it was quality assured by the Ubuntu MATE Team (at the time) before each release. Everything in there was designed to present the "best in class" - especially users coming from elsewhere who might be looking for alternates.
I suppose users may not realise it never was a "full" software centre, but I guess if it existed today, it could plug in to the Ubuntu repositories (apt/deb), Snaps, maybe even Flatpaks...? (There was friction with that last one)
Code wise, it was not the best - me and @Wimpy would describe it as a "prototype gone production" - but it worked! There had been at least 2 attempts to reboot the project (years ago) but it is quite a task and never materialised. I didn't really like how snap distribution slowed the initial launch - but being a snap flexed some rules around its inclusion as a default app, because official flavours have rules of what can be preinstalled, especially if it uses third party repositories like it did.
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So, Luke,
- did the other Ubuntu flavours balk at the specific implementation?
or
- did they simply reject on the basis of NIHS (not-invented-here-syndrome)?
Did they not see the benefits of a facility like the "Software Boutique"?
Did none of the other flavours express any interest in the general concept?
Did anyone at Canonical fully think thru the benefits and implications of having this kind of "Wedge Capability" to pull in the disaffected from the Windows camp in a "somewhat" orderly manner which would create market potential for developers looking to offer Support Services for a category or a tool in particular?
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You can search by function to, say music player, video player, drawing program (sections too). I will say Synaptic is not the most intuitive and takes a bit to learn, but it is will worth the effort as it is the most powerul GUI apt tool available.
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I don't have the answers to that. It does seem today Ubuntu's welcome wizard shows icons for popular software for various audiences, available via snap. (for example: VS Code 
, GIMP 
, Audacity 
)
To clarify the "flexing" with snap: it meant that both 
Welcome and 
Software Boutique could be updated days before the final ISO is created 
... because it'll pull the latest 'stable' snap, of course. Kind of opening a hole to bypass the official "freeze" dates. 
It just allowed more quality assurance time for the curated listings, whereas as a regular Ubuntu package, uploads need approval or an exception.
Back in the earliest days, there was a manual "subscribe" button to add the ppa:ubuntu-mate-dev/welcome PPA like a workaround, because sometimes the curated software by third parties wasn't available until after release. Nothing worse for users then trying to install something but the repository or package name changed... or it disappears... or "Hey! Why can't I get X any more?". At the time, third party repositories (mostly from devs directly) usually had latest versions quicker then what was in the Debian/Ubuntu repositories.
I guess, strictly from a Debian philosophy, Software Boutique pulled in third party repositories, which could conflict with what's in the "tried & tested, trusted" official repositories. That has its risks too. Canonical's snaps addresses that by sandboxing and giving the developer the advantage of directly push updates quicker, all while not conflicting with the rest of the system. Maybe we were their inspiration, who knows?
I liked Software Boutique's approach too - I like the concept of repositories (with trust) and rather have one package system (debs) where everything integrates/runs native on the system, and was great for discovering software for specific purposes that integrate well with MATE.
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Canāt really say that i miss it, i always hated that thingā¦ especially as a ānew userā. Ubuntu Mate really only became useful for me when i figured out that i could just replace it with Gnome software instead.
these days iām perfectly happy with the snap store, even though itās quite buggy for me on Mate.
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I have Jammy and do not want to upgrade to Noble because the Software Boutique offered the best apps in many classes to new users (my elderly parents could see a nice āInstallā button by Chrome, or whatever they want); I also thought the Welcome screen was nicely doneāfor a new user trying the OS (my elderly parents couldnāt be duped into typing a command on their computer, while using the phone, meant for Windows), and the app did a great job of explaining to those using the OS for the first time. My dad liked Linux. Welcome also did a great job of making codecs easy to obtain right away.
Again, I miss these apps and hope the developers will reverse courseāsince I have Ubuntu Pro enabled, my system is supposed to be secure until ā32. I was told this claim was useful as an experiment, and that after that long of a time period, my system would be badly outdated. Maybe Iāll just wait until ā26? Is there a possibility that the devs will reverse their decision on these two apps?
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Would it have been completely absurd to suggest that there be two modes of behaviour, managed by a user-selectable switch, which offered a list of apps in lock-step with the Release-Development timetables, and a second list of apps, giving users access to those latest and greatest versions direct from the Applications' sources?
Also, the default setting for that switch could be "Release-Development" at all times, and could only be toggled to the other behaviour after its installation onto a User's Desktop, not even allowing the choice during the Distro installation process to ensure basic package library compatitilities, as a baseline.
Would that kind of behaviour become too much of a "Frankenstein" to be able to manage the two sets of App listings?
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I did develop a huge chunk of Welcome and Software Boutique back then. While I don't consider myself part of the Ubuntu MATE team any more, it's pretty unlikely they'll make a return any time soon. The team has mostly ever been made up of contributors who work on for a short while.
I have wondered over the years if I ever built a distro-agnostic "Software Boutique" but with the bonus of being like Synaptic/Octopi too where it can find regular packages. I'm lacking motivation right now to seriously work on something like that.
Snaps do support channels, that idea is possible. You could switch to the edge channel, which is essentially whatever's on GitHub, then stable would be once things have been tried & tested.
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Don't know if this sounds any more feasible, but I will give a try at putting the idea out there ...
What opinion would you have on setting up a clone of Synaptic (call it Software Boutique NG), whose sole purpose is limited to offering packages of Applications which have been curated, and for which the Description and Groupings are more specific to Application Groupings, like
- Word Processors
- Spreadsheets
- Document Composers/Layout
- Image Processing
- 2D Graphics/Design
- 2D Graphics Composition
- 3D Graphics/Design
- 3D Graphics Composition
- Technical 2D (i.e. Layout Drawings, Architectural Drawings, etc.)
- Technical 3D (i.e. Parametric Modelling, FEM Analysis, etc.)
- E-pub Builders and Publishers
- etc.
Its own dedicated "Repositories Files/List" would be "hard-coded" and non-modifiable, as part of the package (and subject to the normal package development controls).
Under that framework, I don't know whether you thought it would be possible/easy to implement a mechanism/toggle to offer, post-install, the choice of
- "strict" Distro-synchronized list, and
- "relaxed" Edge-offerings list
Would that throw light on a possible, more workable, path for a future revived "Boutique"?
In my view, the beauty of this approach is that it would be workable for any of the Ubuntu Flavours, with a package list that could be customized to each Flavour!
Also, being dedicated to putting Applications "on display" for window shopping, the GUI could be "specifically customized" for that purpose, maybe by adding an "front-end" for browsing the available choices, similar to the old Boutique viewer, using the synaptic clone back-end to implement the actual Application package installations. Just a thought!
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Hi. Since the Welcome and Software Boutique are already great, I was wondering why devs don't simply copy-and-paste, so-to-speak, those versions on all the releases? If they are just transferring them, no new work would have to be done, right?
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I don't see any technical reasons why it couldn't make a comeback, although the code was more prototype-gone-production, but it should be rewritten for better quality. If you want a spiritual sibling that still exists, Budgie Welcome forked ours and made it their own.
I guess it's more a team capacity issue (who makes up the "Ubuntu MATE team" these days?) to commit to keeping it up-to-date and maintained. Or, in my comment above, it could be a community self-motivated effort to make something that isn't tied to a specific distro, but I'm too busy for that right now.
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