Stevo wrote:It's more of a GNOME 3 thing--that's what you'll get with Debian Stretch if you just install the default desktop, too.
To be more accurate, it's not really a Gnome 3 thing, as in it's not something you HAVE to use to update software just because you're using Gnome 3 desktop. But it's a "feature" of Gnome Software, the allegedly distro agnostic GUI package manager that is one of the components you get if you choose to install the Gnome 3 desktop environment.
It's a very annoying dependency, because seriously, who uses it?
Just use the standard package management tools that are normally used with the distro of your choice. For instance, if you're using Gnome3 in Debian, just use apt and Synaptic.
I have the Fedora-based Korora with Gnome, and updates are just done with DNF (cli commands) and dnfdragora (GUI). When I first installed it and didn't know better (didn't realise Software was Gnome's and not Fedora's program), I tried to update with it and found that all the program did was to download packages. You would then have to reboot into Fedora so that it could begin the installation of the packages in run level 3 (text mode).
Anyway, I soon learnt to ignore it. It was either CLI or the then-graphical package manager YUM-extender.
Fedora itself with its links to Red Hat and Gnome project of course has to support Gnome and its development, but even they acknowledge dnfdragora as the current "alternative graphical package manager" in Fedora, implying that previously yumex was similarly recognised.
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/ ... dnfdragora
I also have an older OpenSUSE install with Gnome 3 + MATE, an experiment to see if I like OpenSUSE (conclusion: not really, and it's gonna go soon) and because I'd installed MATE, the GUI PackageKit was also installed. So I could update with CLI, the huge GUI multipurpose YAST tool, or PackageKit. I don't even recall if Gnome Software came with the install.