Ubuntu 23.10 to adopt a new Flutter-based app store! It’s now available for testing purpose through the preview channel.
As you may know, Ubuntu is working to make desktop apps using Google’s Flutter UI toolkit. Flutter app is really fast. It has modern UI, and can be built for multiple platforms (such as mobile, desktop, and web) all from a single code-base.
The new system installer wizard, introduced in Ubuntu 23.04, is the first one that make with Flutter. Few weeks ago, the Ubuntu Desktop team announced to adopt the second Flutter app, the new app store named “Ubuntu Store“. You can join to discuss about the new app and its name HERE.
The new app store looks great. Compare to the previous Gnome Software and current Snap Store, it just works, and fast. It no longer stucks at either spinning loading circle or “Software catalog is being downloaded“.
However, so far it’s Snap apps only! All you can see are snap apps run in sandbox. Hope, it will add the classic .deb packages support in final release!
Install new App Store “Ubuntu Store” in Ubuntu 22.04/23.04
First, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open a terminal window. When it opens, run command:
sudo snap refresh snap-store --channel=preview/edge/ubuntu-23.10
This command will try to update Ubuntu Software (Snap Store) to the one in preview/edge channel for Ubuntu 23.10. Though, it may output something that:
error: cannot refresh “Snap Store”: snap “snap-store” has running apps (ubuntu software), pids: 2461
In the case, just kill the PID process (replace 2461 to yours):
sudo kill -9 2461
Finally, re-run the first command above.
After installation, either run snap-store or search for and launch ‘App Store’ from ‘Activities’ overview screen. Though, you may need to log out and back it, to make it visible.
How to Restore
To restore the stock Ubuntu Software, open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run command for Ubuntu 22.04:
sudo snap refresh snap-store --channel=latest/stable/ubuntu-22.04
For Ubuntu 23.04, use this command instead:
sudo snap refresh snap-store --channel=latest/stable/ubuntu-23.04
