Muon Suite 1.4 Release Candidate Announced

Recently the latest release candidate for version 1.4 of the Muon Software Suite was announced. For those new users out there or those considering installing Kubuntu coming from another Linux variant, Muon is the flagship software manager in Kubuntu that is composed of  a software center, package manager, and an update manager.

The Packages That Make Up The Muon Software Suite In Kubuntu 12.04

This Kubuntu Computer Is Currently All Up To Date Via The Muon Updater

Starting with the first release after the last stable one four months ago (1.3), here is a cumulative change log showcasing the work that has went into this 1.4 Release Candidate:

 Features:

• Introducing Muon Discover, a new type of software center focused around finding applications. Uses QML and will be the eventual successor of the Muon Software Center.
• The Muon Software Center can now reload the APT database without kicking the user back to the home page. (BKO: #278721)
• Use the KDE proxy, if defined (BKO: #284167) (Common)
• Add the ability to filter by package architecture (BKO: #290437) (MPM)
• Add the option to filter out (uninstalled) foreign-architecture packages that duplicate their native-arch equivalents, and turn it on by default. (MPM)
• Add support to the Muon Software Center for fetching additional pages of reviews.
• Add an "In Progress" view to the Muon Software Center, to show in-progress and pending transactions.
• Display the archive component of the selected package. (LP: #883996) (MPM)
• Added support for Debian's "education" and "introspection" package categories in the Muon Package Manager.
• Added a "busy indication" throbber to the central view of the Muon Software Center to denote initialization progress. (BKO: #295045)
• Keep a local cache of the ratings file for use without internet connections. (libmuon)
• Add sorting capabilities to the Muon Sofware Center. Software can be sorted by name, rating, buzz, usage. (Also by relevancy in the case of searches)
• Add an option to the Muon Software Center to display technical items. (BKO: #297700)
• Show the package name for technical items in the Muon Update Manager and Muon Software Center. (BKO: #294172) (LP: #976071)
• The Muon Software Center and Muon Discover now can automatically utilize the check-language-support utility shipped with Ubuntu's language-selector to automatically install localization and internationalization files for the package being installed.
• The color-coded columns within the Muon Package Manager now take their colors from the KDE color scheme.
• The Muon Update Manager has been given a version column
• The updates within the Muon Update Manager are now sorted alphabetically by name.
• Miscellaneous layout improvements to Muon Discover UI elements.
• The applications list in Muon Discover is now keyboard-navigable.
• Plasma Search-and-Launch integration for Muon Discover. 

Bugfixes:

• If a user manually clicks the package name column header, sort alphabetically even if we are showing relevancy-based quicksearch results. (BKO: #284181)
• Fixed language pack support not installing the proper packages due to incorrect arguments being passed to check-language-support.

Optimizations:

• Do not create package/application objects if we know before hand that there aren't any updates to display. (MUM)
• At startup, the Muon Notifier will wait 2 minutes before showing update notifications, helping to make the login process less busy.

As you can see, the team has been busy getting Muon better and more polished all the time. Great work!

You can try out the latest Muon release candidate in Kubuntu by heading over to Launchpad and adding Jonathan Thomas' QApt Experimental software repository.

Coming soon: A detailed look at Muon Discover, which in the future will look to provide more of a software center like experience in Kubuntu. Stay tuned.

 



Source: Muon - News