Ubuntu 24.04 LTS appeared in mid-April, widely welcomed by its countless fans. Very quickly, however, their enthusiasm was cooled once it became clear that, intentionally or not, the distribution came with a serious limitation.
Namely, DEB files cannot be installed through the App Center, the usual application used for this.
In other words, for distro users accustomed to ease of use, the familiar double-click behavior of a DEB file led to this.
To make things even more frustrating, users only saw a never-ending loading indicator after setting App Center as the default application for opening DEB files.
As expected, this issue forced many to look for other ways to install DEB files, with GDebi emerging as a popular alternative.
The good news is that Canonical recently released an update for Ubuntu 24.04’s App Center that fixes this issue. But, if you attempt to install the update directly from the app, it will fail and show an error because it cannot update itself while it’s still open.
But there is no room for worry. The solution is quite simple. First, ensure that the App Center is not running. Next, open the terminal and execute the following command to update all available Snap packages, including the App Center, which is itself a Snap app.
sudo snap refreshCode language: Bash (bash)
Of course, you can also use Ubuntu’s Software Updater application to do this, but we generally find using the command line more reliable and preferable.
And thatโs it. If you double-click a DEB file now, it will automatically be loaded successfully in the App Center. Also, a message will appear warning you that installing these packages might pose risks to your system.
In conclusion, this update is great news for users who rely on this essential feature. Although it took Canonical three months to release the fix, we really appreciate that it’s now available.
