On Mar 26, 2014 7:47 PM, "Sriram Ramkrishna" <sri ramkrishna me> wrote:
>
> Looking at the reactions around the internet from the release, it
> seems that GNOME is very popular on Arch Linux based distros. In
> fact, in about three weeks most Arch Linux folks will already be on
> GNOME 3.12 and enjoying the fruits of six months of our labor while
> most others are still waiting for an official release. While they
> might be able to obtain through COPR or some other method they aren't
> official.
>
> Unfortunately, none of them will be able to enjoy GNOME Software, due
> to the fact that there is no active development of a pacman backend
> for packagekit. Arch Linux users are missing out on a major part of
> the GNOME eco-system.
>
> These are two AUR packages, one has been orphaned and the last update
> was in 2011.
>
> https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/gnome-packagekit-git/
>
> The second has some update on it and it is from 2013:
>
> https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/packagekit-git/
>
> What can we do to rectify this situation? Given the large popularity
> of Arch Linux its undeniable that they are a big part of our customer
> base.
>
> sri
It's worth mentioning that as an Arch user, I don't have any major problems with the PackageKit backend. It _is_ lacking in a few areas, but it is functional and the parts that are there work well.
It's also worth mentioning that due to The Arch Way, Arch users are much more likely to want to do things themselves. For example, on systems where I even have Software installed, I rarely use it. I prefer directly invoking pacman (well, a small wrapper called pacmatic). Direct control is why I use Arch. What I am trying to get at is this: just because GNOME is my style doesn't mean that something like Software is my style, and presumably, a large portion of Arch users feel the same. Therefore, this may not be the best use of time.
That being said, I don't want to impose my views so I'll leave it up to the fine folks here to talk time budgeting.
Congratulations on the 3.12 release!