message about expert mode should be displayed with search results

[Taleman]

Expert Mode makes a lot of sense for novice users. It keeps them from finding an enormous list of spurious packages that don't relate to what are likely their general needs.

However, it is not obvious that Expert Mode even exists, especially with the option being hidden in preferences. The most reasonable place to draw attention to it is when searching for packages.

If a message about Expert Mode was included in the search results, this should draw everyone's attention if they don't find what they're looking for.

Think about Gmail. This is how they deal with deleted/spam messages. They are not shown in the search, but an option to look at them exists at the bottom.

[Taleman (tapio-lehtonen)]

I checked in Ubuntu 14.04. There software-center hides search result for mariadb in the lower left corner in "Show technical items".

I have told users to go to Software Center to install stuff. Usually that works, but now with MariaDB I had to go install it myself because users could not find the package to install with Software Center.

root@bertram-U:~# lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS
Release: 14.04
root@bertram-U:~# apt-cache policy software-center
software-center:
  Asennettu: 13.10-0ubuntu4.1
  Ehdokas: 13.10-0ubuntu4.1
  Versiotaulukko:
 *** 13.10-0ubuntu4.1 0
        500 http://fi.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty-updates/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     13.10-0ubuntu4 0
        500 http://fi.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty/main amd64 Packages
root@bertram-U:~#

[ԜаӀtеr Ⅼарсһуnѕkі (wxl)]

In vivid this is called "Expert Mode" and is selectable in preferences. This makes it easier for the average non-technical user to find the package they're looking for without spurious results. This is not a bug, it is by design, thus invalid. You could certainly call this a wishlist item, but I certainly see the reason for having it, so perhaps the wishlist might be a note when there are no results about what expert mode is. If so, please make a new bug. Thanks! :)

[Taleman (tapio-lehtonen)]

I disagree with the invalid marking for this bug.

I find it is an entirely reasonable expectation to be able to install mariadb using lubuntu-software-center. The current behavior makes user assume mariadb is not available in Lubuntu. 14.04 is LTS and supported until 2019, so it does not help much to fix this only in Vivid which is 15.04 and not even released yet.

If LSC does not show some search results, it should be made very clear to the user that this is the case. Display prominently among the search results that "Because of $REASON some search results are hidden, and can be seen doing $ACTION".

As for wishlist bugs, my understanding is bugs.launchpad.net does not have wishlist tag. I can not see much point in making another bug report for this exact same "bug".

[ԜаӀtеr Ⅼарсһуnѕkі (wxl)]

I agree. It makes sense just to turn this into a wishlist bug. Done. Development is entirely done so no upstream bugs reports needed. At this point, we simply wait. Thank you for the suggestion!