Proposal: PackageKit or Software Center

So I have this idea for the future of Trisquel - switching at the very least the old Add-Remove menu out for something more modern. The current Add/Remove doesnt handle PPAs well, and it's hard to add new programs to. A bunch of metapackages are also incorrect (gambas2 for example) and I end up using Synaptic in the end.

We could use the Software Center from upstream, but it has a problem. It's hardcoded to the Ubuntu name and repositories and logo. A bug on this was filed here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/software-center/+bug/507325

Debian, which now uses the Software Center, has removed the Ubuntu part and just called it "Software Center." Perhaps we could start from theirs?

We could also use PackageKit. It's got a nice GNOME frontend which you can see here: http://www.packagekit.org/pk-screenshots.html#gnome

It however poses a number of things that need to be considered.

First, it comes with its own Update Manager and Software Sources menu. That means we'd remove Synaptic and the other Update Manager unless we want two different programs to do the same things. Still, the Software Sources and Update Manager preferences in PackageKit I find to be much more sane, especially for non-experienced users. I do not however know how PackageKit handles distro upgrades, and Synaptic's preferences do provide for more options about those.

The PackageKit Add-Remove menu is a step up or two from the current one as it supports things likes queues. It has however one big problem and lacks one feature.

The major problem is you go to filters you can filter it to show non-free software. There's even an option to show *only* non-free software. I think with Trisquel clicking such an option would return a blank list anyway, but it's something we'd probably want to remove from the software, so that's gonna need a patch.

And the feature I wish it had was Xapian-style search like the Software Center, Synaptic, and the current Add-Remove have. It's that search box that searches dynamically at every letter you type. PackageKit has you type in the name then click search. Real-time style is better for those hard-to-spell packages.