I also noticed that the software selection available in the GUI’s is less than that available through apt or apt-get through the command line
This is on a fresh re-install of PureOS v.8 on a new Librem 15 v4 with no other changes made. It happens using either Gnome on Xorg or Gnome on Wayland.
I have reinstalled several times with the same results right out of the box. It is almost as if something is being installed that restricts the sources the the GUI software managers use.
I believe with Wayland, one cannot access the GUI as root. With Xorg, one needs to add permissions to do so.
A quick way to check would be to launch Synaptic from the command line of a terminal to see what the output is. I did when I initially started using PureOS and was unaware of the restriction.
Unfortunately, there are repository problems with ‘Software’, ‘Software and Updates’, and Gnome Packages . Accessing the repositories for me all fail due to a bug that has yet to be fixed. See this tracker item.
Thanks for the reply.
Launching as root from the terminal gives
ERROR:root:Cannot import UbuntuDrivers: No module named ‘UbuntuDrivers’
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “/usr/bin/software-properties-gtk”, line 101, in
app = SoftwarePropertiesGtk(datadir=options.data_dir, options=options, file=file)
File “/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/softwareproperties/gtk/SoftwarePropertiesGtk.py”, line 109, in init
SoftwareProperties.init(self, options=options, datadir=datadir)
File “/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/softwareproperties/SoftwareProperties.py”, line 109, in init
self.reload_sourceslist()
File “/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/softwareproperties/SoftwareProperties.py”, line 599, in reload_sourceslist
self.distro.get_sources(self.sourceslist)
File “/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/aptsources/distro.py”, line 93, in get_sources
(self.id, self.codename))
aptsources.distro.NoDistroTemplateException: Error: could not find a distribution template for PureOS/green
Which I believe is the exact same output as listed in that tracker item. So, it appears to be related to the same bug.
It looks like the same problem to me too. I cannot understand why this has not been fixed since it was first reported in the tracking database in December. None of the GUIs seem to work with repositories because of it, and, if I read the tracker item correctly, the solution is known.
There have been multiple system updates since I originally posted this and the “problem” remains. It is beginning to look less like a bug and more like an intentional lock-in to the Purism software store. Ethical computing?
Synaptic is rubbish, I think the last update was made more than 10 years ago
If you want to add a repository you can use the terminal emulator sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list
Or Gnome Software, that allows you to do this, but I’m not 100% sure if it’s in PureOS by default.
Gnome Software may not work. This problem seems to affect all the relevant GUI applications for me, though I do not use Synaptic. (It appears these applications use the same tool based on Python for this information.)
