The Muon improvement suggestions thread.

[Teunis]

Muon is now working really good for me.
But I have one suggestion, to make it clear when running the Software Centre there is also a Package Manager with more options.

[Guest]

One thing I've noticed that would be nice after switching from the older apper update application, would be the ability to actually see the package names it wants to update.

Muon apparently displays the description of the package when listing available updates as a "user friendly" display. When clicking a package description, I can see more details in a new pane, with a changelog and new version, however, in neither of these views can I find the actual name of the package in question.

It would be nice if muon can provide the package name somewhere in the display, either as a tooltip when hovering over the description, or within the details pane that comes up when a package is clicked on.

[jwebster8]

No suggestions at the moment, but from what I've seen of the new muon after upgrading, it's much much better. A lot of work must have gone into this. Great job of taking user suggestions into account.

Really well done.

[melendro]

One thing I've noticed that would be nice after switching from the older apper update application, would be the ability to actually see the package names it wants to update.

Muon apparently displays the description of the package when listing available updates as a "user friendly" display. When clicking a package description, I can see more details in a new pane, with a changelog and new version, however, in neither of these views can I find the actual name of the package in question.

It would be nice if muon can provide the package name somewhere in the display, either as a tooltip when hovering over the description, or within the details pane that comes up when a package is clicked on.

Yes, please!!!
I hate to update without knowing what I'm updating, in fact I've switched back to use the command line "sudo apt-get upgrade".

[SteveRiley]

Hm, does your Muon not look like this? Package names are clearly visible:

[melendro]

We're not talking about "Muon Package Manager" but about "Muon Update Manager", that is the one which opens when you click in the System Tray icon.

[SteveRiley]

Ah. I don't have that portion of Muon installed. I prefer to manage updates manually, so I've removed all automatic update mechanisms.

[melendro]

That's the appearance of the Muon Update Manager:



As you can see there's no packages names, only descriptions, and as you can see in this example 3 packages have exactly the same description.
There's no way in any menu item or preferences to show the package names.

[SteveRiley]

I see what you mean, good catch.

[bitzbox]

Sorry if this has already been discussed but the Muon Package Manager doesn't remember my UI settings on Kubuntu 12.04.

Example 1:
If I click on a package in the package list, a box appears at the bottom of the screen which has several tabs on it. If I move the horizontal divider up the screen by one inch, exit Muon and then re-start it, the horizontal divider is back at its default location.

Example2:
When I fire up the Muon Package Manager, the left-hand pane is listing packages "By Category". I then click on "By Status", exit Muon and then re-start it, the left-hand pane is listing "By Category" again.

It would be nice if my UI settings were remembered

[gnomek]

As you can see there's no packages names, only descriptions, and as you can see in this example 3 packages have exactly the same description.

Please vote for more information, more functionality about packages in Muon update manager
http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=83&t=102609

[Shimapan]

Besides many other valid points that have already been mentioned by others (like having a console window showing what's actually going on, like in Synaptic), what always bothered me about Muon is its very uninformative package list window (current version 1.4 here).

All you can see is the package name and description, and that's it. The rest of horizontal space is wasted for nonsense: "Status" and Requested".
"Status" should be indicated by the icon at the very left, which currently has no purpose and always is the very same Deb package icon. Replace that useless icon by an icon showing the status, that is, different icons for "not installed", "installed", etc. The "Requested" info could better be presented by underlying the line with a user-configurable colour, or if you don't like that, put a second icon for "Requested" right next to the "Status" icon.
If you don't have the gfx skills to create such icons, I could offer myself to create them.
Once the wasted space is reclaimed, you could add in actually important info that is seriously lacking now, like "Version installed", "Version avaiable", and "Download size".

Something else that would make the package list more presentable is putting the package names in bold, so you can better distinct them from the description right below them.

edit: I didn't mean to drop the sort functionality for status of packages, of course. You could still sort by package status then by clicking on the package icon column, just like you can in Synaptic.

[Teunis]

I don't quite understand your issue with the status column, I find it quite a handy way to select on the various 'status' of the listed packages.
Sure it could be nice to have the installed version displayed but it's in the vast number of packages always the same anyway.
For example, I use the blue-shell repo and when I select Firefox a new Versions tab appears because there are several versions available and I can select the one I want, suits me fine.
The download size might be of interest for those on a really slow connection, if so when using the Install button you can see it in the status bar.

My request would be for a refined search function, like selection on name OR description.

[oshunluvr]

+1 on the search function. The current search looks almost random, but I don't remember synaptic being any better at it. I used to use kpackagekit along side synaptic until switching to Kubuntu.

I've had enough trouble with Muon to date that I usually use the terminal to do my updating.

[Shimapan]

I don't quite understand your issue with the status column, I find it quite a handy way to select on the various 'status' of the listed packages.

It seems you've misunderstood me there. Of course the ability to sort by package status would be retained and would then be performed by clicking on the package icon column.
In my opinion, it's a very poor design choice to waste so much space for "Status" and "Requested", when the same could be accomplished using much less space, so you have the space for actually important info.