Stemming from the ongoing discussion around [1]the issues raised with Fedora's Flatpak package of OBS Studio and how Flatpaks should be prioritized within the GNOME Software app center/store, the future of RPM support within GNOME Software raised.

A user [2]suggested that RPM package support be decoupled/removed from GNOME Software completely in favor of promoting Flatpaks:

"Since the consensus seems to be that RPMs should be at the end of the priority list, what about decoupling (removing) RPMs from GNOME Software completely?

This might seem to be a step back, but it would make GNOME Software more consistent between Workstation and Silverblue, and support Fedora in its goal to make Flatpaks the primary packaging option.

That would leave RPMs to be a choice of the more advanced users, who seem to prefer the powerful dnf over GNOME Software anyway.

With RPMs missing from GNOME Software, prioritizing package sources becomes easier too: be it Fedora Core -> Flathub Verified (or Probably Safe) -> Fedora Extended -> Flathub Extended or similar."

To which there was a bit of a surprising [3]response :

"Removing RPM applications is my long term goal, but I'm not sure how quickly we'll be able to get there."

That response was from Michael Catanzaro, a Red Hat engineer on their desktop team, a member of the Fedora Workstation Working Group, and a member of the GNOME Release Team.

[4]

Quite interesting to see a long-term goal of GNOME Software to get rid of its RPM packaging integration to focus on Flatpaks. We'll see how long it takes to get to that stage though of dropping RPM support from GNOME Software.



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/OBS-Studio-Poor-Fedora-Flatpak

[2] https://pagure.io/fedora-workstation/issue/463#comment-955714

[3] https://pagure.io/fedora-workstation/issue/463#comment-955741

[4] https://www.phoronix.com/image-viewer.php?id=2025&image=gnome_software_lrg