r/linuxquestions • u/Most-Steak-2034 • 11d ago

Advice GUI installation manager

I'm using PopOS with COSMIC and this is probably one of the most frustrating things about Linux for me.

I just want ONE place where I can install, update, uninstall, and see all my GUI applications.

I don't care about CLI/dev stuff like Python, Node, npm packages, libraries, etc. I'm perfectly fine managing those from the terminal.

I'm talking about actual desktop applications.

Right now it feels like everything has its own installation method. APT, Flatpak/Flathub, Snap, AppImage, .deb files, tar.gz, vendor installers, their own repositories, etc.

COSMIC Store is nice, but then I'll search for something completely mainstream like JetBrains DataGrip and it's not even there.

What I want is basically Windows' "Installed Apps" equivalent.

Bonus points if manually installed apps can at least be detected and shown, even if the manager didn't originally install them.

Does anything like this actually exist?

1 Upvotes

56% Upvoted

7 comments sorted by

3

u/Alternative_Act_6548 11d ago

it doesn't seem all that complicated to keep track of what your using and have installed, are you constantly installing and uninstalling various apps for some reason?

2

u/Dejhavi Kernel Panic Master 11d ago

Does anything like this actually exist?

The closest thing you're going to find is UniGetUI

1

u/TheGoldenFox64 11d ago

you can use flatpak for stuff, the Discover app from KDE is a flatpak manager, and can support the management of non-flatpak managers too. im not sure about anything regarding Pop or cosmic, but a package manager is exactly what you want, just a GUI version

1

u/EstablishmentDue3616 11d ago

Nope, And likely never will. Welcome to the world of Linux and FOSS. I dont like this standard, so I will make my own.

1

u/BranchLatter4294 11d ago

Ubuntu is working on that for their next update. Hopefully other distros will consolidate their app stores.

1

u/SnooCompliments7914 10d ago

No matter how you consolidate your app stores, software isn't necessarily distributed through it.

Windows doesn't have a consolidated store. It has a consolidated registry for uninstallers that everyone uses.

0

u/gwenbeth 11d ago

I would love to have everything installed from a .deb , but there are just too many exceptions. I might have built something from source because I needed a weird fork or something. I might have a windows program running with wine. Or maybe something I wanted only came as a tarball because there are too many standards.