In monthly new letter for July 2017, Linux Mint team has revealed that, they are working on modernizations of Mint Software Manager, a package management tool developed by Linux Mint project itself. This process of modernization is inspired by other GUI based package management tools available in Linux World.
Linux Mint was one among the first GNU/Linux distributions who introduced the concept of modern Software Management tool. This idea was evolved from Android Play and iOS Appstore. The mint install presented a simple and efficient way for managing software installations. It was a great help for beginners who were not familiar with the concept for command line. This software manager remained almost unchanged for years. Now, when Linux Mint team looks into it, it feels pretty outdated. That is why the team is working on modernization of Software Manager.
Following are key points on which Linux Mint team focusing while modernizing Software Manager.
 |
| A preview of update mint install. (Courtesy : Linux Mint) |
Following are key points on which Linux Mint team focusing while modernizing Software Manager.
For the original announcement and other monthly updates from Linux Mint, you may proceed to projects official blog.
- The user interface looks more modern and its layout is inspired by Gnome Software. Its simpler, more consistent than before and it makes the application look much cleaner.
- The software manager no longer uses Webkit. The only toolkit used is GTK and the entire application was ported to GTK3, to bring support for HiDPI.
- The software manager launches 3 times faster than before. Browsing categories and apps is almost immediate.
- The backend was ported to AptDaemon and the Software Manager now runs in user mode. Consequently you do not need to enter any passwords to browse applications, and if you enter a password to install or remove an app, the authentication is remembered for a little while so you can install or remove other apps without having to enter that password again.