Canonical has decided to fork Gnome Software, tailoring it to promote its Snap package system.

As a result, it lacks support for Flatpak, and prioritizes the search for applications over Snap packages, which in my opinion generates some confusing cases, leading for example in some searches for pre-installed packages such as deb package to show a Snap package as the first result. and far below last, the pre-installed deb package. Unusual, in many cases even Ubuntu Software only finds the application in Snap.

Although Snap and Flatpak are for accessing certain applications and their versions, they are not an efficient replacement for most of the packages that make up a distribution, and particularly they are resources that I do not use because I estimate that they have a larger file size, a less integration with the desktop environment and a slower boot.

My suggestion is to install and use Gnome Software with the necessary plugins.

This requires:

Open a terminal and run:

sudo snap remove snap-store



sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install synaptic gdebi gnome-software gnome-software-common gnome-software-plugin-flatpak gnome-software-plugin-snap

You can also add the repository to manage Flatpak applications, running from the terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:alexlarsson/flatpak

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

I particularly prefer not to use anything from Flatpak or Snap, and I still use apt from the terminal, synaptic as GUI and in the case of independent deb packages gdebi, which resolves dependencies.