Ubuntu Software Center Lets You Test-Drive Applications Without Installing Them [Ubuntu 11.04]

Ubuntu Software Center got a really cool feature in Ubuntu 11.04: it lets you test drive applications without having to install them.

To get this to work you firstly must install a package called "qtnx":

sudo apt-get install qtnx

Then when you open Ubuntu Software Center you should see a new "Test drive" button next to the application screenshot. The applications run on a remote server so you must have a decent Internet connection and also, this is not available for all the applications in the Ubuntu Software Center, but nevertheless, this feature sounds awesome. Here's a video I've just recorded so you can see exactly how it works:

Thanks to Novatillasku for the news!

A Cross-Distro Unified Installer Is On The Way

Developers from Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, Suse, and Mageia attended to a conference last week in which they've tried to find a way to make "installing and removing software on Linux suck less."

I've kept wondering why all distributions duplicate so much work. Sometimes, there is a good reason, like a radically different technical approach. But sometimes, it looks like we're going different ways just for the sake of doing something ourselves. We should fix this. Cross-distro collaboration is not the way we usually do things, and I believe we're wrong most of the time. Cross-distro collaboration is a cultural shift for us. But it's very well needed.

- Vincent Untz

 It seems an unified way to install software is in the works which will use Ubuntu Software Center as a front-end. Richard Hughes says Ubuntu Software Center will be ported to PackageKit very soon (in the next couple of weeks) and describes how it will work his blog (so check out that link for more info).

Here is a video presenting the summary of Cross-Distro Application Installer meeting:



Oh, and here's something quite interesting from the specs:

Will add several new optional fields to desktop file specification upstream for the proper solution, more details to come soon. This will allows us to search for photoshop and return gimp in the search results.

Thanks to Zsolt Sándor for the tip!

Ubuntu Software Center Gets Ratings And Reviews Support [Natty Updates]

An update in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal finally brings ratings and reviews to Ubuntu Software Center.

They don't seem functional for now though - I was unable to rate or write a review but I see some applications were rated so maybe this is an issue on my system only. Either way, this is still work in progress so a lot should change later on (Natty didn't even each Alpha 2).

Here are some screenshots: