I think that most of the people you talk to here are going to tell you to avoid it. A lot of us have apt-get engrained in our minds as the defacto interface for managing software on Debian based systems.
That being said: why not? For Apple, the App Store is great. It shows you what is popular and what others find useful. It adds a layer of social proof to your applications. I was using an HTTP REST client for the longest time that was a pain in the ass to use. A lot of user interface inconveniences existed. After Google failed me, I cracked open the App Store and was fortunately able to find the app Rested. It's not perfect in my opinion, but it's been a breath of fresh air when developing my API.
We can argue all we want on the walled garden approach of the App Store, but it's a great platform. We also need to remember that it's still an infant, and it's going to evolve and improve. The more we use it when building software, and the more our customers and users use it to discover and rate our stuff, the better it will become. Apple certainly doesn't let the community dictate their moves, but they certainly allow us to influence their decisions if enough people are on board.
For this reason, I think you should definitely start using the Ubuntu software center. If it provides a simple and more pleasant experience for your users, great! Hopefully there will be more and more people looking at desktop Linux in the future who will need a place to find applications. If you can help evangelize and shape their platform with the weight of a successful app, then the whole ecosystem will grow and flourish from it.
Judging by the ratio of upvotes to answers, this seems like a topic that a lot of people are interested in but nobody knows about.
Personally, as a user of Ubuntu, I never use the Ubuntu Software Centre - not even for free software - I much prefer apt-get, and I'm not aware of anything (aside from paid software, which I didn't even know about until you mentioned this) that Ubuntu Software Centre does that apt-get doesn't.
As a side note, aptitude is a superior package management tool to apt-get. The syntax is the same, but aptitude has 3 main advantages:
1) Keeps track of system state. Tracks packages installed as dependencies, and remove them when necessary meaning no orphaned packages.
2) Handles recommends well. apt-get fails to handle recommends, which many packages depend on to pull in dependencies.
3) Searching. More intuitive and better formatted than apt-cache search. There is also the text UI when running aptitude directly. For example, how do I find all installed python packages?
$ apt-cache search python
Returns all packages with python in title or description.
vs
$ aptitude search '~ipython'
or
$ aptitude search python | grep ^i # installed packages are flagged with i on the first line
"apt-cache search" does AND search over everything by default which is neat to find software for something. with aptitude you have to use some cryptic flags for that.
to look for packages that you have installed use "dpkg -l"
aptitude is otherwise great and I prefer it over apt-get
With aptitude you would use the description flag (~d) like so:
$ aptitude search '~dautojump'
p autojump - shell extension to jump to frequently used directories
p jumpapplet - autojump notification icon, to jump to frequently used directories
"and remove them when necessary meaning no orphaned packages."
I understand the reasoning in this, the only downside is that it means if I've started to use something that only got installed as a dependency, it can disappear without warning.
"More intuitive and better formatted than apt-cache search."
This is neat, I may start using it.
To be honest, a lot of people have recommended aptitude to me over the years, but I've never seen enough of a benefit to try to override my muscle memory. I guess it's a classic "bicycle problem".
Although aptitude still has some bugs on bi(/multi)-arch machines, i.e. you install x64 on your machine but still install some packages in x86 for compatibility reasons; aptitude sometimes has dependency issues.
It's not a bug, but it is a problem. Aptitude's resolver is pickier. Debian has finally embraced multiarch systems and restructured x86 packages. It can still lead to weird dependency issues (but they're just that—issues with dependencies), but they're far less common and this strategy seems to have given them the confidence to include a lot more x86 library coverage than there once was.
I find Arch Linux's pacman/AUR far better than apt-get or Aptitude. Apt is all over the place - apt-get, dpkg, and building from source is just another story.
I'm a long time Debian user and always use apt-get, but I just used the USS for the first time to buy Sword & Sworcery to have something to play for the holiday. Painless purchase and one click installation.
Chose that game after seeing it in the Steam client, but wasn't able to buy it for Linux there.
Command Line is without any doubt superior than Ubuntu Software Center but I have slowly started moving all software installation and update related stuff to Ubuntu Software Center and System updater respectively. Ubuntu Software center is at the moment a little clunky.
It provides a point-and-click way to add repositories recommended by Canonical (including the paid stuff). If you're at the command line, you have to already know what repositories you want to add.
I'm selling the same app on both Ubuntu Software Center [1] and Mac App Store [2]. Between June and December I have sold 29 licenses on Ubuntu store and ~2000 licenses on Mac App Store.
Chrome Web Store [3] seems to be a much more promising distribution channel for Linux apps. With the new APIs it will be possible to access native window manager, USB ports, filesystem or webcam. Besides, you don't have to deal with incompatibilities between distros.
Thank you for you comment. This kind of comments I was looking for.
What I've been looking into this today...It seems that it's not really worth it, as you said. I would kind of want it to worth it, maybe some day it will be.
Ubuntu software centre has always felt a bit lacklustre to me as a paid software place. Most of the stuff on the front page is either listed as free, have bad icons and screenshots (sometimes Unity,sometimes Gnome 2 or something else) or all 3.
Not to mention that the UI is kinda slow and clunky.
Basically gives the feeling of being in a neon lit discount store rather than a premier software showroom.
I think it might do better to get rid of it as an application altogether and just build an attractive webpage that gives a lot of space over to highlighting the best, most polished commercial apps with a handful of the higher quality open source desktop software. Use a browser plugin to trigger installation.
Installing open source libraries, dependencies and dev tools could be handled by a more utilitarian ncurses front end to apt or something.
There seems to be only a few commercial packages in the Ubuntu Software Centre. As a commercial developer that probably means one of two things: (1) The market is yours for the taking or (2) There is no market.
I'd be curious to know if it is worth it as well. Have you spoke with any commercial developers directly?
Remember that SMB was being sold as part of the Humble Bundle when it was first added to the Ubuntu Software Center, and sales made through HIB aren't in that 77 figure, even if they were downloaded via USC.
Which those 77 sales are really pirate copies as Ubuntu Software Centre sold SMB without permission and hasn't paid the SMB any either. I'd stay away from them if they're willing to pull this type of shenanigans.
Regarding the Super Meat Boy issue, here is a response from David Pitkin who runs the Ubuntu Software Center at Canonical and works with developers:
"I just looked into it and the check to Tommy and Edmund from Canonical is in process for the 77 copies of Super Meat Boy. We have been working together since November to get it resolved, no piracy here just some miscommunication".
That's meaningless by itself -- SMB was sold through a lot of other channels, both on other platforms and on Linux, before it was put in the store. It's placement in the store was also accidental, and so probably didn't get promoted much!
Yes I thought it was pretty snarky of Canonical to release that figure and I thought it cast them and their platform in a worse light than SMB. That info release more than anything in that incident would put me off working with Canonical and the Ubuntu App Store.
Software center... never use it, in fact the way it had mixed the non-installed stuff with installed software really ticked me off (this is probably my biggest gripe with unity, wheres the menu of all the installed apps??? I don't want to shop ALL THE TIME!). I had installed gnome classic (for getting to whats installed) and Synaptic/Web sites to get to what's not.
So went to find software center - not in the classic menu, but entering software-cetner got it from the terminal.
Seems it suffers like all the others, only one level of hierarchy, looking for Desktop publishing, select office and start reading through the hundred plus entries, most of which have a clever name and icon which does nothing to relate it to desktop publishing at all.
You want o make big bucks at your app, help develop better app stores, so people can find your app.
I would be pessimistic. Most people in the Linux community aren't in the habit of paying for software.
Also, I avoid the Ubuntu Software Centre as much as I can. I find the Ubuntu desktop to be atrocious and I log in via ssh as much as I possibly can to Ubuntu machines.
If there's any market here it would be for a $500+ product that customers want bad enough to deal with the USC than it would be for $5 games; even in that case most of your marketing work is going to be outside the USC.
Why hasn't anybody come out with a Linux distribution that contains an Android personality so that you can run Android apps side to side with normal Linux apps kinda like Windows 8? It seems Linux could use this to close the usability gap with other OSes.
That's not really true: If you develop a nice and polished desktop application which can be better than an opesource alternative we are disposed to pay.
For example check the Humble Bundle: Linux users always pay more than average.
Although I'd not sell in the Ubuntu Software Center: As you would miss a lot of users from other distros (or people who don't use the Software Center).
Not quite true.
Linux users are the 'true average'.
The problem is, Windows Humble Bundles are bought for $0.01 en masse with the intention of reselling, sinking its average price.
I'm the same way as far as my habits (using ssh, went back to debian because Canonical was getting a bit too commercial ), but that doesn't mean that they couldn't find some niches that would do well.
Software that runs on Linux that I've seen people pay for:
Accounting and Bookkeeping
Medical Billing/Practice Management
POS/Retail Inventory Management
Industrial Control Management Interfaces
Are you seeing a theme? Boring useful software that needs to be maintained to keep up, and software that talks to other systems.
I doubt that Humble Bundle's Linux sale would perform that well if the games aren't playable on Windows/Mac, considering the games that claim to be playable on Linux ends up buggy on it.
I use the software center whenever I can. I like the reviews, screen-shots, description, and link to official website.
It's a pretty ugly piece of software with unrefined edges all over the place but it gets the job done for now. That being said I've never bought anything through the software center, just installed free software.
Not speaking from direct personal experience, however the Humble Bundles have found that linux users tended to pay more than average, which goes against the common assumption that linux users want everything for free.
Kind of users on Linux and Windows and Mac is different, so same app would have different sales.
Most of Linux users has good computer knowledge therefore some apps like Type-Fu should have bad sales.
Also most of gamers living on windows not Linux...
Can anybody share his sales statistics on Ubuntu Software Center?
I'm guessing that people using the "free" side of the Ubuntu Software Center are not required to have a credit card on file. This is probably one of the most significant barriers compared to the Apple app stores.
That being said: why not? For Apple, the App Store is great. It shows you what is popular and what others find useful. It adds a layer of social proof to your applications. I was using an HTTP REST client for the longest time that was a pain in the ass to use. A lot of user interface inconveniences existed. After Google failed me, I cracked open the App Store and was fortunately able to find the app Rested. It's not perfect in my opinion, but it's been a breath of fresh air when developing my API.
We can argue all we want on the walled garden approach of the App Store, but it's a great platform. We also need to remember that it's still an infant, and it's going to evolve and improve. The more we use it when building software, and the more our customers and users use it to discover and rate our stuff, the better it will become. Apple certainly doesn't let the community dictate their moves, but they certainly allow us to influence their decisions if enough people are on board.
For this reason, I think you should definitely start using the Ubuntu software center. If it provides a simple and more pleasant experience for your users, great! Hopefully there will be more and more people looking at desktop Linux in the future who will need a place to find applications. If you can help evangelize and shape their platform with the weight of a successful app, then the whole ecosystem will grow and flourish from it.