Linux Moves Toward Apple App Store

Apple’s App Store is one of the great success stories in software today. Is Linux now on the verge of having the same outlet?

Surely there must be a way of making the process of installing and removing software in Linux suck less?

The good news is that the end may be in sight for end users subjected to the tyranny of config files and the whole make install malarkey. That’s because work is well under way toward a Linux equivalent of Apple’s App Store that will work with pretty much every major distro. Earlier this month, a whole bunch of smart black T-shirt guys (and the odd gal or two) representing Linux distros including OpenSUSE, Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian and Mageia got together to consume cafffeinated beverages and thrash out details for an app installer system that will allow anyone, using any of these distros, to browse an application store, read or contribute ratings and comments, and ultimately click on a button to download and install an application. Life may imitate art, but Linux, it seems, imitates Apple.

Ultimately, the aim is to hide all that ugly Linuxy complexity from people who just want to download and run software on whatever distribution they may find themselves using, said Richard Hughes, a developer at the meeting who works for Red Hat.

Read the rest at ServerWatch.