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Synaptic Dropped From Ubuntu 11.10
An anonymous reader links to a story at Techie Buzz according to which (quoting): "When Canonical started developing the Ubuntu Software Center, I knew that a time will come when it will completely replace Synaptic. The Software Center is a noob-friendly replacement for Synaptic where users can discover new applications more easily. Unexpectedly, Canonical has decided that it is time for the Software Center to replace Synaptic as well. So, in the next daily build of Ubuntu 11.10, Synaptic will no longer be installed by default. The Ubuntu Software Center still lacks many important features that are present in Synaptic."
Or, alternatively, you can just install Debian. I've pretty much abandoned Ubuntu at this point.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
No, they didn't need the space. It has been Canonical's plan for a while to drop Synaptic and Update Manager (and any other GUI apps that are front ends to the various apt tools) and roll everything into Software Center.
It's been on their roadmap for a while, and I was surprised that Synaptic made it into 11.04. I am also surprised that Update Manager is hanging around.
This is all in the interest of average-Joe users who don't need to know the differences between Synaptic and Software Center, or how they overlap with each other, or with Update Manager. Long-time users or power users can go install Synaptic from the repos if they like, or use apt or dpkg at the command line. Me personally, I always update with 'sudo apt-get update' on the command line because I find it faster than Update Manager. But Grandma doesn't need to do that; software installation and updating should be done all in one place for her.
:q!