The “software” module was added to the Community Website.
The old “Software Portal” available for Mint 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 users contained approximately 400 applications. It was integrated with the main website and it was using the .mint format with mintInstall.
The new module contains every single package available in the repositories. So for instance, right now, it shows 30,592 packages. It’s integrated with the community website and it uses apturl which will come pre-installed in Linux Mint 9. It will also allow the new upcoming version of mintInstall to review packages straight from the application.
Reviews
Reviews now relate to packages, not to releases, so if you review a package now, your review will continue to be available after Mint 9, 10 and so on get released. You can see how long each review was written so obsolete data isn’t an issue. At any time you can update your review of a package and reset its timestamp. As a consequence we’re hoping to get a lot more reviews from the community in this module than we previously had in the Software Portal.
A review is basically a score and a comment. The comment is a one-liner. The score ranges from 1 to 5 depending on how much you like the application you’re reviewing.. 1 is for packages you hate, 2 for packages you don’t like, 3 for packages you think are so-so, 4 for packages you like, 5 for packages you think are “awesome” (or “brilliant” depending on where you live) 
The overall score of a package is the sum of all the (individual score – 3). The rationale behind this, is that a 3 is neutral, and so you can impact the overall score of each application by -2, -1, 0, +1 or +2 depending on how much you like it. The more people like a package the higher the score… and vice-versa.
Screenshots (updated)
You can upload screenshots by clicking on the “no screenshot available” picture. Once your screenshot is uploaded, it will be under review by the admins. If approved it will then appear in the module.
Feedback
Happy reviewing, and don’t hesitate to give us some feedback.
Note: The categories are a bit mixed up. This is an issue we’re aware of. We’ll fix this in the coming days.
