A new idea for the openSUSE 'app store' that simplifies and builds on the basis of our existing technologies.

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For a long time now there has been a great deal of buzz about potentially having a fully featured app store on +openSUSE . Whether it was Bretzn or porting the +Ubuntu Software Center, we certainly would like to have a more informative GUI for discovering and installing software. At present we do in fact have a halfway solution in our software.opensuse.org interface with it's direct install (formerly 'one-click') which is awesome, and certainly is one thing that makes my job easier when I bring new users from Windows.



However, there are a number of areas where this interface falls short. The most glaring can be that often the applications lack a description or have one so short as to be nearly useless. Another significant point is the lack of user reviews. Reviews help flesh out things that may be missed in a description, as well as provide tips at a glance on what the new user should expect. I believe reviews would be reasonably easy to implement in the current domain, and getting more robust descriptions should not be terribly difficult.

I think using our current technologies as a base, we could easily create a simple, elegant, and easy to maintain app store.

  • Add reviews, ratings, pictures, and robust descriptions to http://www.software.opensuse.org
  • Add a 'cart' to the domain, where a user could select multiple software packages for installation. To 'check out' with this cart would prompt the domain to generate a YMP with all the packages selected previously, installing all of them akin to our Multimedia One-Click.
  • Refine the search function to more easily search by descriptions or meta tags vs. the current search which works best for specific package names.
  • Create a small browser window (probably using QWebView) which would exclusively display the domain, and allow the download and opening of a YMP.
In this solution we create an interface that would be intuitive and user friendly to any new user, without having to make any changes to our package management stack or having to maintain especially complicated software. Also, since most of the 'app store' would be running on web standard technologies it would be highly maintainable considering the massive volume of developers who have web experience and knowledge.

Of course we can later add a number of social functions such as Facebook and Google+ integrations. We may also find it useful to tie in an authentication system tied in with the social desktop. But for core functions, this is not even remotely necessary.


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