I am proud to announce the release candidate for Muon Suite 1.3. The Muon Suite is a set of package management utilities for Debian-based Linux distributions built on KDE technologies. Packages for Kubuntu 11.10 “Oneiric Ocelot” are available in the QApt Experimental PPA, as well as in the main repositories for the pre-release version of Kubuntu 12.04 “Precise Pangolin”.

The focus for this release has been fixing bugs both in the new software being introduced in 1.3, as well as bugs that have existed in Muon from before 1.3. I plan to release a final bugfix release for Muon Suite 1.2 containing the relevant fixes from 1.3.

For a look at what’s new, see the alpha and beta release notes.

Changelogs

Detailed changelogs for LibQApt and Muon can be found here and here, respectively.

I am proud to announce the beta release for Muon Suite 1.3. The Muon Suite is a set of package management utilities for Debian-based Linux distributions built on KDE technologies. Packages for Kubuntu 11.10 “Oneiric Ocelot” are available in the QApt Experimental PPA.

Several bugs reported since the alpha have been fixed, and the new Updater GUI now shows a nice background that informs you when no updates are available, as opposed to a blank view.

Changelogs

Detailed changelogs for LibQApt and Muon can be found here and here, respectively.

Muon Package Manager

• Added a confirmation dialog when changes to a package require changes to other packages. This can be disabled from the Muon Package Manager’s settings dialog, if so desired.

• Marking multiple packages at once has been made 3x faster than before.
• Issues where a package couldn’t be unmarked for installation/upgrade since they were dependencies of another package marked for installation have been resolved.

Muon Software Center

• The package name has been added to the version string on the application details page.
• The Muon Software Center now warns you when removing an application will remove other packages.
• The screenshot viewer popup dialog has been replaced with an in-window overlay on the application details page. It has a blurred, transparent background and animates in and out nicely.

We have to go deeper!

Muon Update Manager

The Muon Update Manager has seen a rewrite for Muon 1.3. Before, the Muon Update Manager was really just a stripped down version of the Muon Package Manager, without filters or package search. The new design for 1.3 was built with an update management workflow in mind, and is much more user-friendly and update-oriented.

Updates are split up into three sections: Application Updates for applications, System Updates for packages that aren’t applications (libraries and other boring stuff.), and security updates for updates that fix vulnerabilities in the software on your computer. This segregation allows users to easily check out what’s new with what they really care about (Changes in their applications), without having to wade through a bunch of library packages that they have no idea about in regards to what they are. Clicking on an item will cause a changelog viewer to expand with a smooth animation to display all Debian changelog entries since the version currently installed. Updates that require the installation of new packages/removal of other packages are not selected by default, but can be selected separately (along with a dialog showing the required changes.)

During update installation, a progress bar animates in showing download and installation progress. (Download speed is shown once APT has had enough time to make a sensible reading, it had not had time to make a sane estimate by the time I took the screenshot.)

The updater also provides a warning about starting an update while not connected to power. If the power becomes disconnected at any point before during the update, the warning will show up.The warning animates in nicely and will go away on its own when the power is plugged back in.

All in all, I feel that the Muon Update Manager provides a very smooth, slick, and easy-to-use interface for managing updates. Additionally, the Muon Update Manager can now be launched manually from the “System” section of Kickoff/Simple KMenu.

Changelogs

Detailed changelogs for LibQApt and Muon can be found here and here, respectively.

This is the second monthly bugfix release for the 1.2 series, and brings several fixes for Multi-Arch packages on 64-bit systems with Kubuntu 11.10, as well as fixes for a few other bugs with package searching, the history view, and the QApt .deb Installer.

Packages for Kubuntu 11.04 will be available soon from the QApt repository. I will try to get 1.2.2 pushed as an official update for Kubuntu 11.10 over the next week or so using the Ubuntu Stable Release Update process. Since this has a more rigorous testing process than my unofficial PPA, regression testing from users will be required. Stay tuned for more info about that if you’d like to help!

Further technical information about the release, including source tarball downloads and a detailed changelog, can be found at the project pages here and here.

I will be releasing the first pre-release of the Muon Suite 1.3 next weekend, so stay tuned for that too.

The 1.2.1 release fixes package duplication on MultiArch-enabled systems with APT 0.8.16+, as well as fixes a handful of other bugs.

I was unexpectedly busy today, so I do not have packages for Kubuntu 11.04 ready yet. I’ll get on those tomorrow, though.  When they are ready, they’ll be in the usual PPA.  Muon 1.2.1 has been uploaded to the development version of Kubuntu 11.10, however.

Further technical information about the release, including source tarball downloads, can be found at the project pages here and here.

The Muon Package Management Suite is a collection of package management applications that make package management easy on Debian-based systems, whether or not you know what “package management” means. Packages for Kubuntu 11.04 “Natty Narwhal” are available in the QApt  PPA. Packages for the development version of Kubuntu 11.10 are available through the official repositories.

The focus of this release has been adding features to the existing Suite applications, as well as refining existing ones.

I would like to also thank the KDE translation team for their awesome work this cycle. The Muon Suite is now fully translated in 20 languages with 9 more languages over 70% translated. There are four new fully translated languages since 1.1.0. Awesome work all around.

What’s New

Muon Package Manager

Lots of work has been put in to refining the user interface of the Muon Package Manager to make it even more convenient and usable. Additionally, several new features have been added to give you greater control over your packages. Many of these changes also apply to the Muon Update Manager, which shares components with the Package Manager.

New features and improvements:

• A history view like the one included with the Muon Software Center has been added as a dialog. You can access it from the “View” menu, or by using the Ctrl + H shortcut.
• Added an option to the configuration dialog to make APT treat a package’s “Suggests” as dependencies. For those who don’t care about disk space. 
• Modifying settings that require administrator privileges to apply now turns the “Apply” button’s icon to the key icon, as in KDE’s System Settings.
• An option has been added to control whether Muon warns you about installing untrusted packages, or disallows the installation of them entirely.

• Multiple packages can now be selected and marked all at once by selecting them and choosing an action from the right-click menu.
• A package in the package view can now be de-selected, hiding the details widget, by ctrl-clicking on the package.
• Packages can be locked at their current version via the right-click menu. Locked packages have a little lock emblem on the package graphic. Additionally, a “Locked” filter has been added to the status filter box.

• The layout of the status bar has been improved. These improvements allowed me to remove the frames around the status bar labels.

• Space-saving improvements were made to the package detail tab widget. The sides and bottom of the tab widget frame were removed, leaving less borders around the edges. The marking buttons were moved to the line with the package short description, and the “screenshot” button was removed since most packages don’t have a screenshot, and the Muon Software Center handles this functionality much better. The support label was also moved to the package description view. The end result gives much more space to actual detail content, wasting less on chrome.

Muon Software Center

There are several new, nifty features for the Software Center this time around.

• Installed packages now have a checkmark emblem, as shown here.
• The “Addons” view and “Reviews” view (more on that in a second) can now be collapsed.
• The application launcher dialog that appears when you install new applications has been replaced by a less intrusive in-window notification, with animated appearance/disappearance. (Based on your KDE widget effects settings, not related to desktop effects.)

• Non-application packages are now shown in PPA views, since many PPAs host software not in the Ubuntu application database.
• Added some Debian branding love.

• Miscellaneous optimizations to make browsing applications even faster.

Read Only support for full application reviews has also been implemented. I know that it kinda sucks that you can’t submit reviews from the Muon Software Center at this point, but I figured this is better than not being able to see them, either. The reason that full read/write support is not implemented is that there is as of now not really a suitable way for C++ Qt/KDE applications to interface with the Ubuntu Single Sign On service, which is necessary to submit reviews. Work on an SSO interface was started by the unstoppable Harald Sitter during his Ubuntu One GSoC project last year, but the SSO API has since changed and the KDE SSO stuff will need a fair bit of work before it is useful again. I plan to work on this during the next release cycle to ensure full review awesomeness. As a note, this is also the reason why support for the Ubuntu Software Store has not been added yet.

QApt Utilities

Several new utilities are bundled with QApt to help seamlessly integrate package management with the desktop. These include:

The “Command Not Found” Plasma Runner

Yes, the one-and-the-same Plasma Runner that I mentioned over a year ago here. Back then QApt hadn’t had a stable release, and I didn’t really have a venue to publish it. (I could have published it by itself, but I’m lazy like that. ) It functions exactly the same as I mentioned in the original blogpost. If you type the name of an executable that is not currently installed, this runner will suggest the package that provides this binary. This is especially useful on new installations where you may not have remembered to install something.

The QApt Deb Installer

This utility functions much like GDebi, with some bonuses like included icon support and less memory usage.

Now I’m putting on my Kubuntu hat. As was mentioned back with the announcement of Project Timelord, Kubuntu wanted to move away from python-based tools for the default installation due to their resource-hungriness and proneness to runtime errors. Now that the Ubuntu Software Center is Ubuntu’s primary .deb installer rather than GDebi, it makes even more sense to use the QApt Deb Installer. (I know that GDebi is still being maintained, but the KDE UI is somewhat dead at any rate, with nobody to step up to give it the maintenance it deserves.)

The QApt Deb Thumbnailer

This is a thumbnailing plugin for KDE. It offers thumbnail previews of .deb files in KDE file browsers. (Dolphin, open/save dialogs, Konqueror, etc) Not much else to say, but pretty nifty if I do say so myself.

The QApt GStreamer Helper

This utility provides a helper that integrates with GStreamer’s codec installation API, which Phonon uses to automatically install missing codecs for multimedia playback. It uses QtGStreamer which makes dealing with GStreamer a whole lot easier.

The Future

For Muon Suite 1.3 I plan on polishing existing features, as well as providing some new ones. Things I have on my todo list in no particular order that may or may not get done are:

• Support for submitting reviews to the Ubuntu Ratings and Reviews server.
• (Optional, I know some people would prefer not to have it) Support for the Ubuntu App Store.
• Configuration for the save on quit warning. (Impossible to re-enable once disabled)
• Rewrite the Muon Update Manager to look less like the Muon Package Manager, and be more usable/appeal to a wider target audience skill-wise. (Read: simplification. Power users are probably already using the Muon Package Manager for upgrades already, since you can control what gets upgraded, and likely compulsively check for updates like I do. )
• Further refinement of the new utilities distributed alongside LibQApt.
• Add a magnifying glass when hovering over the screenshot thumbnail in the Muon Software Center, to signify that it can be made bigger.
• Add an option to always be notified of dependencies to be marked for install in the Muon Package Manager. You can already can (and should) hit the review button before you hit apply, but apparently some people just like a dialog.
• More (optional) data columns in the main view of the Muon Package Manager. This has been requested before, but I have had higher priorities such as package lock support and multiple package selection, etc.
• Currently the Muon Software Center resets to the home screen after all pending installations has finished so it can let APT reload its internals. I’m fairly sure that this is unavoidable, but I think it’d be nice if afterwards it took you back to where you were, if the package you were still exists, etc.

Debian packages are still coming soon, in the Debian sense of the term. All of the dependencies are packaged, so all that’s left is to actually package and upload. The Kubuntu packages should be 95% of the way there, so all that should need to be done is to review and make changes as necessary. I’ve no specifics on when it’ll finally be “in”, but there is progress on that front.

QApt::DependencyInfo

This class provides detailed relational dependency information about packages and debfiles, such as depends, recommends, conflicts, replaces, breaks, etc. It is very useful for resolving dependencies with .deb files, where APT cannot be used for dependency resolution.

Both DebFile objects and Package objects have several functions returning DependencyInfo objects in 1.2.

QApt::Package

• Added the ability to pin and unpin packages via writing files to /etc/apt/preferences.d/. Refer to the docs in package.h for more info.
• Added an upstreamVersion() function to the Package class to return the upstream  version of a package. Also include a static version in case we have a package version without a Package object and want the upstream version without having a Package object instantiated.
• Added a static method “compareVersion()” to the Package class to compare the  versions of two packages, returning the standard strcmp() less than 0, 0, or greater than zero when appropriate.

QApt::Backend

• Added Backend::saveDownloadList() to create a download list of all packages that are marked and need downloading, usable by the new downloadArchives() function.
• Added a downloadArchives() function to download a list of archives to an arbitrary directory. The worker will emit package download signals as usual. This can be useful, for example, for downloading packages to a USB stick for a user.
• Added Backend::addArchiveToCache(), whichs adds .deb files for the candidate versions of existing packages to the apt .deb cache. This function can be used to add .debs from e.g. a USB stick so that computers without internet connections can update packages.
• Added an installDebFile method to QApt::Backend and the QApt Worker. This method starts the installation of the given .deb file, complete with a DebInstallStarted event signal on start, DebInstallFinished when finished, and a debInstallMessage() signal in between for dpkg output. A new error, WrongArchError, has been added to QApt::ErrorCode for when a .deb file cannot be installed due to incompatible CPU architectures for binary packages. (No multiarch support yet)

Full changelogs for both the Muon Suite and LibQApt can be found here and here.

The Muon Package Management Suite is a collection of package management applications that make package management easy on Debian-based systems, whether or not you know what “package management” means. Packages for Kubuntu 11.04 “Natty Narwhal” are available in the QApt Experimental PPA. (Or will be within an hour of this being posted.)

Changelogs

The 1.1.90 release brings updated translations compared to 1.1.85. Detailed logs of what has changed since 1.1.85 can be found here and here, for LibQApt and Muon respectively.

The Muon Package Management Suite is a collection of package management applications that make package management easy on Debian-based systems, whether or not you know what “package management” means. Packages for Kubuntu 11.04 “Natty Narwhal” are available in the QApt Experimental PPA.

The focus of this release has been fixing bugs reported against beta 1, but there are a few things that have prevented me from string freeze and such, so I am releasing this as a second beta  rather than a release candidate. (To make up, if things go well there may only need to be one RC)

On the front of Muon packages for Debian, things do seem to be moving. I’ve installed Debian in a VM and have done some testing to make things work OK. For the 1.1.85 release, the Muon Software Center has Debian branding in the form of an icon for the “Get Software” pane. There’s also an interested maintainer, who will look after the packaging. Currently the blocker seems to be the need for libdebconf-kde to be maintained/uploaded to Debian, but hopefully Debian packages of Muon will be available “soon”, in the Debian sense of the word.

Changelogs

The 1.1.85 release also brings various bugfixes, some of which will also be included in this month’s bugfix release for the 1.1 series of the Muon Suite. Detailed logs of what has changed since 1.1.65 can be found here and here, for LibQApt and Muon respectively.

The 1.1.3 release brings several bugfixes made over the past month, as well as updated translations.

Binary packages for Kubuntu 10.10 and 11.04 can be found at the QApt PPA here.

Further technical information about the release, including source tarball downloads, can be found at the Muon and LibQApt project pages here and here.

The Muon Package Management Suite is a collection of package management applications that make package management easy on Debian-based systems, whether or not you know what “package management” means. Packages for Kubuntu 11.04 “Natty Narwhal” are available in the QApt Experimental PPA. I’m working on packages for maverick which should be available soon.

At the recent Ubuntu Developers Summit I sat down with Aurélien Gateau, mastermind behind the “Common user interface mistakes in KDE applications” blog series, for an hour to go over the Muon Package Manager and Software Center UIs. It was  a very productive sprint, and I have managed to make most of the improvements that we discussed.

The other big bit of UDS news is that the Muon Suite has been chosen to be the default package manager for Kubuntu 11.10, the Oneiric Ocelot. By the time Kubuntu 11.10 is released the Muon Suite will have had its first birthday. In this year I believe that the Muon Suite has vetted itself, proving to be a robust package manager as well as a stable set of applications. With my Kubuntu developer hat on, I believe that it was a good move to wait a bit before jumping on the “latest and greatest” for its shininess value, though I can’t deny that it would have been neat to have the Muon Suite included a bit sooner. (Everybody seemed impressed with my impromptu presentation at UDS, so I think the shininess still stands. )

Here are the highlights of this release:

Muon Package Manager

• General status bar layouting improvements. These improvements allowed me to remove the frames around the status bar labels.

• Space-saving improvements were made to the package detail tab widget. The sides and bottom of the tab widget frame were removed, leaving less borders around the edges. The marking buttons were moved to the line with the package short description, and the “screenshot” button was removed since most packages don’t have a screenshot, and the Muon Software Center handles this functionality much better. The support label was also moved to the package description view. The end result gives much more space to actual detail content, wasting less on chrome.