No way to install tasks like LAMP.

[Jo-Erlend Schinstad]

Ubuntu Software Center should provide a way to install tasks, like LAMP Server, mailserver, etc. It shouldn't be necessary to run tasksel in a terminal and having to resort to synaptic feels wrong.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

Huh, TIL about tasksel. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Tasksel

That page says, twice, that "most of the tasks available from tasksel are also available as meta-packages". Which of them aren't?

Is there reason to believe that more tasks will be added in future, that aren't also available as metapackages?

[Jo-Erlend Schinstad (joerlend.schinstad-deactivatedaccount)]

Try searching for LAMP or webserver in Ubuntu Software Center. New tasks are added all the time, it seems. I've never seen the "Ubuntu Desktop USB" task before, for instance.

[Gary Lasker (gary-lasker)]

Hi Jo-Erland. Is this still an issue in recent versions of Software Center? If so, could you be more explicit with steps to reproduce and expected results? Please let us know, and thanks for your help!

[Jo-Erlend Schinstad (joerlend.schinstad-deactivatedaccount)]

There's still no way to install tasks in Ubuntu Software Center. I don't know what information you're looking for.

Open a terminal and run "sudo tasksel". You get a curses application that allows you to select things like "LAMP Server", "Mailserver", "DNS Server", etc. This is very user friendly except that you have to use a terminal to get to it, and you have to know about the "tasksel" application in advance.

Instead, I should be able to search for "mailserver", "dns server", etc in Ubuntu Software Center, and those tasks would be presented to me, at the top of the list – since these are higher level choices. The tasks should be clearly distinguishable from other applications and packages and should contain a description of the task, such as which packages it uses and how they're configured. Right now, if you search for "LAMP Server" in Ubuntu Software Center, you get no results. If you search for "LAMP" then you get a Linux Magazine and Evolvotron, which has nothing to do with LAMP at all.

Adding tasks to the USC should be a small and easy task and a lot of people might want a LAMP Server on their desktops – for development or other purposes.

[Gary Lasker (gary-lasker)]

Thanks Jo-Erland, I'll set this confirmed. I think it will make it wishlist so that we track it directly for feature planning and development since I believe we will need to add new functionality to support it. In any case, it needs a bit of investigation.

Thanks again!