Comment 9 for bug 1616332

Even on a desktop, gnome-software not running all the time makes hardly a distinction. Searches for software may take a second longer (probably gnome-software startup time), still it works perfectly fine.

One can try this by killing gnome-software, then searching for something using the activities menu. This starts up gnome-software fully automatic. But it's not terminated after the search is done, which is certainly part of the problem.