Before I start: I have no idea if the flares are correct but I tried my best. Anyways..

I have been testing Solus in VirtualBox and I must say very nice. As an open source game developer my only two missing workstation components are:

  • IntelliJ Idea Community
  • Github Desktop

Now I can already see the responses in my mind. "Install it as a snap!" "Install those as a flatpak" "Nah you should use an appimage". Yes, yes I could do this. But the thing is there is an entire portion of the software center completely devoted to third party.

Why IntelliJ Idea Community? Because IntelliJ Idea Community is the free to use version that does not have a 30 day free trial attached to it. It is my daily driver for Java development.

Why Github Desktop? "OI JUST USE GIT/kraken/insert thing here". Well that's because that's just what I've used for years. Others probably have as well. I do not know IF this qualifies as third party since it is open source, but shiftkey's repo is the primary one I have been using for years. Here is a link to it: https://github.com/shiftkey/desktop
I'm sure it can be integrated into the software center somehow.

Anyways, thanks for reading my rabble rabble. It would be amazing to see these two pieces of software find themselves straight in the software center

    Third party section is for software that has a license that forbids third party distribution. So instead of being in the repository it uses a build recipe that repackages what is usually a .deb package provided by upstream into an .eopkg for use on Solus in real time on the end users system when they click install

    This system is old, buggy and can not be fixed due to the way it has to work to adhere to their licenses. It has been marked as deprecated for as long as I have been around (5+ years) and is not accepting new additions. Eventually it will go away.

    It appears IntelliJ Idea Community is under the Apache license and Github Desktop is under the MIT license so they could theoretically at least, go into the repository proper not the third party section.

    IntelliJ Idea Community was requested and accepted for inclusion but no one stepped forward to maintain it.
    https://dev.getsol.us/T221

    Github Desktop was requested and no one answered the value add question posed in response for 4 years, this may still be eligible.
    https://dev.getsol.us/T5376

    For clarify anyone that learns packaging for Solus and wants to commit to maintaining it is welcome to step up as a maintainer once something is accepted for inclusion.

    Because I'm an insane early adopter, I prefer to use the toolbox app from jetbrains. Then I can always have the newest version of IDEA and pycharm. It actually works quite well in Solus.

    I also use the IDEA community edition for my daily work with scala.

    jordan4ibanez Now I can already see the responses in my mind. "Install it as a snap!" "Install those as a flatpak" "Nah you should use an appimage". Yes, yes I could do this. But the thing is there is an entire portion of the software center completely devoted to third party.

    I use IntelliJ via Flatpak. it's a nice experience and easy to update. the "third-party" section of the software centre is clunky and is going to go away - I think the plan is to integrate Flatpak and/or Snap into the software centre instead, so why not get a head start on that?