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This has been discussed pretty heavily before, and the issue really boils down to two problems: the difficulty of getting into Extras, and poor packaging practices (partially due to ignorance/laziness and partially due to lack of good guidlines).

Fixing those two issues would greatly improve the application installation experience. A user would only have to enable Extras to get access to all the applications (and their dependencies) that they could possibly desire, and good packaging practices means much less confusion as to what those things actually are.

The Downloads section is pretty much just a showcase of what's available, and (in my rather badly-perspected opinion) not particularly relevant to the core issues. It should certainly stay up, though.

It would also be nice if a little summary is included in the app manager itself. Most of the noobs just dont install them because they dont know what they are and what they are used for. A little summary will really help.

They shouldn't look into Apple Store which no one really saw but into any Linux package manager working for years. Drakrpm, synaptic. KDE's KPackage is even working now with penguinbaits' KDE.

But interface isn't enough. Oooh, shiny is misleading. Power behind Linux package managers depends on manhours commited to properly sort applications, resolve dependencies, check for updates, rebuilding from sources AND proper hardware infrastructure with multiple mirrors.

Linux distributions can usually depend on network of free university repositories, Nokia would have to pay for quality service as purely commercial vendor.

For maemo.org downloads, it's very simple:
- Make it stable
- Extend what was added a short time ago: add paging to the "Fresh" and "Popular" categories, so that one could browse through all the listings.

In addition, take a look at sites like palmgear/pocketgear, with categories like "Essentials"

Just a clarification on the appStore... what I meant about it is to allow for easy navigation of both paid and free apps; Featured, Just Added, Most Popular, etc.

I would prefer to be able to install and upgrade all apps through the Application Manager. I am not familiar with AppStore, but here are some improvements I would want to application manager:

1) The ability to refresh application list for a single repository, or a list of selected repositories. (Not too important for me, but if that was obvious to the average user, it could help them isolate a repository with update issues.)

2) The ability to browse applications available for install by repository. This would be especially helpful when installing third party repositories to quickly find what you just added.

3) More detailed descriptions of packages, or hyperlinks within the description to a page with more details, screenshots, etc. Much like the Maemo Downloads pages now.

All I know from my experience is that whenever someone says "Oh, a new version of XYZ is out!", I check my application manager for an update or package first. If I have repository.maemo.org for chinook (or whatever), I should't have to go to a webpage on maemo.org and search through to find a link that just opens app manager back up.

It is, it's just that a lot of packagers (through ignorance or laziness) don't package things properly and you end up with the package name in the summary field or nothing at all.

Application manager or the Downloads page aren't very important to the issue here. Good packaging practices and easier access to Extras (along with good quality-control, of course—maybe faster access is better a better description) are what will really improve things. Changes to Application manager or the Downloads section really only serve to gloss over deeper issues.

Tough one.

Seems to me that the debian package manager works just fine on the x86 (etc) systems. If that is what we have then something IS radically wrong someplace. Some incomplete and others scattered all over the place.

I'm afraid to try to add much of anything anymore and even more afraid to try to update something.

To be honest, I have reached such a point of confusion with about everything to do with the n800 that I just turned mine into an ebook reader and until something better comes along (or it dies) I'll just be happy with a 24G ebook reader :-/. It does that very well .

The maemo site I just gave up on, can't figure out if a minor version change counts as a new app or not and trying to figure it out is time consuming (more than I am willing to do again anyway).

The threads on various important subjects have gotten so long and convoluted as to be (IMO) useless in any rational time frame.

I really wish I had an answer for this, but I just don't - I've reached the point of terminal confusion :-(. Hopefully someone can figure it out as I ran out of airspeed, altitude and ideas :-/.

Improving Application Manager? Easy:

0) Make it FASTER!

1) Add checkboxes at each app, to install/remove many apps in one go. Currently I need to install them on by one, where waiting for the application list to reload takes the most of that time! It's extremely slow.

2) Browse packages by repository (mentioned before), or at least add a source repository information in package details

3) More helpful error messages. Currently I have few packages to update, which I cannot actually update, as Manager shouts at me with some kind of conflict / contact the author error. Not very helpful.

4) Better UI layout. Currently in 'Browse installable applications' section there are buttons with names, which is not very convenient, and I end up browsing 'All' anyway. I'd go for some kind of structured tree or such.

5) Actually, porting Smart or Synaptic as default package manager would be quite nice idea ;)

6) Browse updated packages after refreshing repositories. Currently Managers asks me if I want to refresh app list, I tap Yes, but.. I don't really know what's new.

7) Avoid duplication of repositories when adding a new one.