The first alpha of the upcoming 1.4 version of Muon has been released, in our series about package managers we presented in detail. The most prominent new feature is Muon Discover, this feature is being developed by Alex González under the sponsorship of Blue Systems: Kubuntu’s new sponsor and Netrunner’s too.

Muon Discover aims to eventually replace the Muon Software Center, but not in this version. It offers a new way to install and find new software at the same time it offers a good user experience, full with animations, good looking transitions and screenshots, this is achieved thanks to the use of QML.

The Moun Software Center has been updated too, now you can sort lists by rating, buzz, search relevancy and, of course, name.  New in Software Center is Muon’s ability to connect trough global proxy settings and ratings are cached so you can see them even without an internet connection.

For power users, Muon Package Manager has improved how it handles multi-arch packages, among the most exciting (if a little geeky) features is how it avoids duplication by only showing packages matching your architecture, needless to say, this can be turned off.

If you love bleeding edge software, you can install this first alpha by adding the following PPA: ppa:echidnaman/qapt-experimental. There’s only one catch, you need to be running a distro based on Kubuntu 12.04, the full changelogs are available here and here.

Source: Jonathan’s blog