Questions[gnome-software](ubuntu)

Im using Ubuntu 20.04. Some time ago, the gnome software app had disappeared, so I reinstalled it using apt-get install gnome-software

Now after a recent update, I'm seeing two software applications, one named 'Software' which was there before, and another named 'Ubuntu Software.' I checked the package list, but I see no new packages.

Some other answers say that the second one is 'ubuntu-software-center' but that is not the case, I checked.

Moreover, I tried uninstalling 'gnome-software', and the old one I installed, i.e. 'Software' goes away, and the new one stays. However, when I right click an application, I no longer have the option to view the details of that application.

I want to get rid of the new 'Ubuntu Software.' But I cannot find its package name. Does anybody know what it is and how do I remove it?

Ubuntu Software (aka Gnome Software) on Ubuntu 18.04 has started giving the error message: Unable to get a list of updates: remote lvfs has no cache signature

This issue started recently and, based on a bit of online research, it may be related to Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS) and the fwupd application.

Here are the installed fwupd packages:

~$ apt list --installed | grep fwupd
fwupd/bionic-updates,now 1.2.10-1ubuntu2~ubuntu18.04.3 amd64 [installed]
fwupd-signed/bionic-updates,now 1.10~ubuntu18.04.3+1.2.10-1ubuntu2~ubuntu18.04.3 amd64 [installed,automatic]
fwupdate/bionic-updates,now 12-7~ubuntu18.04.3 amd64 [installed]
fwupdate-signed/bionic-updates,now 12-7~ubuntu18.04.3 amd64 [installed]
libfwupd2/bionic-updates,now 1.2.10-1ubuntu2~ubuntu18.04.3 amd64 [installed,automatic]

and

~$ snap list | grep fwupd
fwupd 1.4.2 2084  latest/stable    richard-hughes  classic

If i click on Ubuntu Software, it doesn't open. I have a fresh install of Ubuntu 20.04. I tried try to upgrade all packages, but it doesn't fix this problem.

If I try to run killall software-center there is no process with this name, and software-center returns command not found. If I try to reinstall it with apt I have these results:

$ sudo apt-get --purge --reinstall install software-center
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Package oracle-java8-installer is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
E: Package 'software-center' has no installation candidate

I recently moved from Debian to Ubuntu, I usually used apt to install package (and don't want to use the software center as apt it let me know which package are installed as dependencies).

But I already found something I wasn't expecting:
some package like atom and discord are available in the software center but not in apt, isn't the software center a graphic interface for apt? does it use something else?

I've been running Ubuntu 17.10 for a good while. Starting yesterday (April 9) the process gnome-software started using large amounts of memory. I don't know if it is related to the update that I took that day.

gnome-software grows to use up to 7G of memory (my system has 8G of RAM.) This expands into eating up swap and root. My root usually runs at 51% of its total disk space and it went up to 96%. System ground to a halt. Had to power off. Only after some automatic disk cleaning (?) did root return to 51% usage on its own.

This happened twice yesterday and it is starting again today. After running only 1 hour gnome-software is now using (according to system monitor)
virtual mem=5.4G, Resident me=4.7G, memory=4.7G

More info:

This is continuing to happen. The root disk space is being used in at least the file /var/log/syslog. Over the last few hours it has grown to 4.9G in size. I have to manually kill the gnome-software process and delete the log file to keep the computer functional.

When gnome-software starts using memory, the CPU jumps up and down from 100% to 0%. This can be seen in the system monitor program in the resources tab. I verified this by stopping the gnome-software process and CPU usage goes to almost nothing. Telling the process to continue show CPU usage jumping all over again.

This CPU usage doesn't show up in "% CPU" on the process page. Probably due to the refresh interval?

Even more info:

This is the error that repeats over and over in /var/log/syslog when this is happening. syslog was 1.7G when I caught it this time.

Apr 10 20:27:31 rwkeating-XPS-8300 gnome-software[2485]: g_byte_array_remove_range: assertion 'index_ + length <= array->len' failed
Apr 10 20:27:31 rwkeating-XPS-8300 gnome-software[2485]: Ignoring unexpected response

I verified this by pausing the gnome-software process while doing a tail on syslog and then un-pausing the gnome-software process only to see the error flooding the log. So it is caught in this loop. Don't know what it means ... yet.