Software app very slow to fully start up

[Jeremy Bícha]

This is follow-up for bug 1592678 which more or less requests that gnome-software not run a background service.

1. From a terminal, run pkill gnome-software to kill the background service.
2. Start the Software app and click one of the apps on the front page to see more info about it.

What happens
============
In my testing on a Ubuntu 16.04 Live DVD in VirtualBox with a traditional non-SSD hard drive and 1.5 GB allocated RAM (admittedly not the speediest environment), it took 90 seconds for that info page to load!

Once that page is loaded, browsing to other pages doesn't take long at all. Or if you just wait 2 minutes first then it's not that slow either.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 16.10
Package: gnome-software 3.20.1+git20160617.1.0440874.ubuntu-xenial-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.4.0-25.44-generic 4.4.13
Uname: Linux 4.4.0-25-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.1-0ubuntu4
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: GNOME
Date: Sun Jun 19 04:59:00 2016
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
InstallationDate: Installed on 2016-04-09 (70 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-GNOME 16.04 LTS "Xenial Xerus" - Beta amd64 (20160408)
SourcePackage: gnome-software
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Robert Ancell (robert-ancell)]

Duplicate bug 1712528 had some discussions about this in artful.

[Ads20000 (ads20000)]

Is there an upstream bug for this somewhere or do we need to file one? This is a very common problem with GNOME Software, see here (https://twitter.com/probonopd/status/899740745481015297) for an example. I run into this bug all the time (as Alan experienced it) and it makes GNOME Software very painful to use (I just use Terminal anyway, but with more up-to-date snaps coming onto GNOME Software, the GUI will become more useful). I think people don't bother saying they're affected by this bug, they just say that GNOME Software is crap and move on...

[Robert Ancell (robert-ancell)]

Check if there is an upstream bug on https://bugzilla.gnome.org/page.cgi?id=browse.html&product=gnome-software and file one if not. I'm not sure if it's due to the way we're using it in Ubuntu and it does seem to vary between GNOME Software versions (so may be considered fixed upstream).