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> I would advocate people getting more familiar with their package manager.

Personally, I think these kinds of lists and the package manager don't compete with each other. On one side, you list the software packages. The other side is where you get them/ where you package or publish some if you are a developer. For example, if you are from another OS and just came to linux and you wonder: how can I edit videos on Linux. I don't think searching from the package manager is more valuable than this list. It gives people more choices, a wider look, a quick skim like you go shopping.

> Plus there are nice graphical package management tools like the Ubuntu Software Center.

I swear half of the softwares I found on this list (with my usage, not all of them) is not in the Ubuntu Software Center.

The problem is the ton of garbage that one finds before actually finding Awesome Linux Software on them.

Reviews are not enough, curating is also required, because when everything is a 5 with 50% reviews going both ways no one has time to try out everything.

I get your point and that's definitely true for any reviewing system but I'm unconvinced this list does any better job. Let's take the Sharing Files category[1]:

* aria2: no reference that it is a command line program

* Deluge: no reference that it is a command line program which requires quite a bit of configuring to get a web gui working

* Dropbox: it's comment says "Dropbox is a free service that lets you bring your photos, docs, and videos anywhere and share them easily." which isn't technically untrue but isn't really all that accurate either given the context it's placed in. Should be rewritten as "Cloud storage with paid for and free plans".

* ownCloud: no reference that this is a web project so you need to run Apache / nginx with PHP and have the whole thing port forwarded on your router.

* Teamviewer: a non-free remote desktop application. While it does support file transfer it doesn't strictly belong in this category

* uGet: described as "The best download manager for linux" which is highly subjective, opinionated description and doesn't actually describe what it does well. So it's of no help to people what-so-ever

* uTorrent: no mention that it is not open source, and only the server (ie not the desktop GUI version - the server is only controlled via the web UI) natively supports Linux. Also last time I checked it worked on Ubuntu, but there's no mention of that here either

That's just one category as well. There are issues in all the categories I looked at. Take the Office[2] category as another example, they have 12 entries, 4 are described as office suites, and 3 of those 4 are have descriptions that say "one of the best" or "the best" office suite on Linux. And ironically the only one of those 4 descriptions that actually explains what comes with the office suite is the only one that wasn't described "one of the best on Linux". So how is that helpful to users confused about which office product to run on Linux when the only one that is explained is the one that isn't recommended and all the others have no meaningful description?

The curation and descriptions of these kinds of lists really need to undergo heavy editorial work otherwise they become pointless and I'm really not convinced this meets the mark. For example if I wanted a decent bit-torrent client I could just google "linux torrent client" and I would get pages of results linking to reviews comparing different clients and listing their top 5 / 10 / whatever - often with some real in depth analysis too. That's the kind of lists that people who are looking for software need. Something that explains their use, their strengths and weaknesses. Otherwise it becomes no more effective than a list produced by your package manager.

Don't get me wrong, lists like these had a real benefit in the 90s when it was harder to search for content, but these days you need to provide a lot more than just a list of names and a terse description if you want to actually help people. As it stands, some of the descriptions given could waste a lot of people's time as they go down the rabbit hole of installing ownCloud (for example) but expecting it to function like Dropbox / Onedrive and then getting frustrated by the configuration of Apache and their home router. Or installing Deluge or aria2 and then getting annoyed that they aren't seeing an icon appear in their launcher.

[1] https://github.com/LewisVo/Awesome-Linux-Software#sharing-fi...

[2] https://github.com/LewisVo/Awesome-Linux-Software#office

> * aria2: no reference that it is a command line program

> * Deluge: no reference that it is a command line program which requires quite a bit of configuring to get a web gui working

  $ apt-cache show aria2 | grep Tag
  Tag: implemented-in::c++, interface::commandline, network::client,
  $ apt-cache show deluge | grep Tag
  Tag: devel::lang:python, implemented-in::python, interface::x11,

Ah yes, I forgot there was a GTK+ UI for deluge (I've usually messed around with the web UI).

I don't get your point about aria2 though. That just confirms what I posted. That doing a package manager search would give your more information than the linked article.

Since when does apt-cache show tags? Mine doesn't, I have

  $ apt-cache policy apt | grep Installed
  Installed: 1.2.24

He's using the `show` parameter which does include tags. However you can't really grep it like he had done because the tags can span multiple lines with indentation rather than line prefixes (ie human readable rather than machine readable).

apt-cache show doesn't show tags for me:

  $ apt-cache show aria2 | grep Tag
  $ echo $?
  1

Does on Debian and has done for a few releases as far as I can recall. I've done it on Wheezy (7.x) boxes and it's still there on an Jessie (8.1) machine I just tested it on.

> eg open source or not - just looking through that list I saw non-free software without much warning about their status

To add to this, I found it strange that they added the proprietary "Civilization 5" to their list, but not the Free Software game FreeCiv.

And they have Minecraft with a symbol that appears to be a dollar sign with a strike-out, which, I assume, means "free of charge". Minecraft is very much not free of charge.

Many of these tools are not available over the packet manager and can only be installed using a PPA/AUR.