Solus repositories small or big?

Girtablulu Solus repo is not small, we have over 4k source packages ...

I suspect that the only folks who characterize the Solus repository as "small" are reviewers who get background from Solus reviews written 4-5 years ago and can't be bothered to update the facts.

Nonetheless, the Solus repository is significantly smaller than .deb/.rpm repos, and that is a plus, in my opinion. The Solus repository is focused on apps that are needed for ordinary desktop use, which cuts the number of packages by eliminating server and niche packages, and is curated to eliminate the chaff, which dramatically cuts the number of packages by eliminating outdated, poorly maintained, poorly conceived and poorly designed apps.

Less, in this case, is more.

Except with respect to the kernel, which is tightly controlled, the Linux community prides itself on allowing anyone to code and distribute just about anything, whether or not it is useful, well designed or properly maintained. I don't think that is necessarily a strength. We do not need 300+ distributions, most of which are ego-driven niche projects, or 50,000+ apps, most of which are used by a handful, at best. It diverts time and talent from creating a professional-quality Linux desktop ecosystem. Torvalds observed years ago that Linux would not gain a significant market share unless and until the Linux community developed enough self-discipline to focus on quality rather than quantity. Time has proven him right, in my opinion.

FanboyStudios With that said, there's potentially a better solution. That is to add some sort of a "verified" badge to apps that are verified to work well with the latest version of Solus. This badge would then have to be earned by the developers of said app by making sure it remains compatible with the OS, and if they don't then they can lose their badge.

Some distributions do this. Ubuntu Budgie, for example, provides basic information about each app in its repository:

I don't know who does the analysis/review, but someone responsible for the distro -- presumably the responsible maintainer on the team -- is taking a developer-independent look at the apps.

I'm not sure that self-reporting by the app developer would be sufficient, because Solus is updated on a rolling basis, and team-based maintainers are more likely to spot potential problems than a disconnected app developer not involved in week-by-week development/maintenance.

I'm not sure how much work by the Solus team would be saved by self-reporting in any event. If nothing else, even if Solus elected to rely on self-reporting, someone on the team would have to audit app-developer compliance.

I've never been involved in distro development or maintenance, so I might be talking through my hat about the issues presented by your proposal. But I trust the Solus team to provide a high-quality, rock-solid distro on an ongoing basis, and that is the reason I use Solus and support Solus financially.

FanboyStudios This way we could grow our repos, but also keep an eye out for quality.

A "verified" badge, as you note, means only that an app is "verified to work well with the latest version of Solus". It says nothing at all about the quality of the app.

Brucehankins I think quality is a relative term also, in some areas at least. Things like ux (appearance, layout, design) may be of high quality to one set of users while also being of poor quality to another set.

That is certainly true, but I would submit that generally accepted modern design standards exist for GUI apps, and that goes beyond personal preference.

All major Windows, MacOS, Android and iOS apps, although often quite different in appearance, layout and design, are remarkably similar in terms of meeting modern design standards. Major Linux apps (e.g. LibreOffice) do so, as well.

But many Linux apps fall far short of the mark, designed, it would seem for 2001 rather than 2021. The apps are functional, but not up to the design standards that Windows, MacOS, Android and iOS users expect.

I use LinSSID, for example, a completely functional app that seems stuck in the Windows XP days in terms of design, when compared to competing Windows/Android/iOS apps with the same functionality.

The outdated UI** doesn't bother me, but I think that a Windows/Android/iOS user, comparing the apps that they use on those platforms, would look askance.

My comments about quality were made in the context of Torvald's remarks a decade ago to the effect that Linux would not gain a significant market share unless and until the Linux community developed enough self-discipline to focus on quality rather than quantity. Torvalds was speaking in context -- to gain market share, Linux has to directly compete with Windows and MacOS, and I think that Torvalds, when thinking about quality in that context, was speaking about then-current generally accepted GUI design standards. At least that is how I interpret his comments.

A significant number of Linux apps were behind the design curve then, and it seems to me that, in light of developments in both Windows and MacOS GUI design over the last decade, not to mention the advent of Android and iOS apps, that a significant number of Linux apps are well behind the design curve now. Users expect apps to meet modern design standards, and are right to do so.

Brucehankins Strictly looking at functionality could be a better option. Does it do the thing it says it does without breaking? Do all features or functions work properly as stated?

I think that functionality (in the sense that you are using the term) defines the bare minimum threshold of what is acceptable. Any app that doesn't meet that minimum threshold should not be in any repository, period.

Brucehankins Functionality of an app is tested and verified by maintainers and team members before an update is pushed or an app is included (my assumption) in the Solus repos.

That's my understanding, too, and one of the reasons that Solus remains rock-solid.

**Edit/Update:

By way of comparison to LinSSID, this is the app used at the railroad, available for Windows, Android and iOS:

murbert I played around with KDE Neon a couple days ago. There's a 'distro' with few apps in the repos. Almost everything in the repos are flatpaks or snaps. Meh. I very much prefer native apps to universal as, in my anecdotal experience, they are smaller and faster. It looks to me like Solus repos have way more native apps than Neon.

I think that the trend toward using snaps and flatpaks for app installation is gaining steam. Ubuntu has moved strongly in the direction of snaps, for example. I've noticed that quite a number distro-packaged apps (e.g. Firefox and themes) are now snaps or flatpaks in several distros.

The upside is that using snaps and flatpaks (which self-contain dependencies) reduce "dependency hell" issues for distro maintainers, cutting the workload significantly. The downside is performance, as you point out.

Whether the increasing use of snaps and flatpaks in distros/repositories is good or bad in the long run, I don't know, but I think that is the direction in which the Linux desktop is headed.