by thwak » Mon Jan 16, 2017 7:54 pm
When you click the "Search" button displayed in synaptic package manager toolbar, you are provided choice to search by "name" or by "name and description". By including description texts in the search and using queries like "graphics", "game" or "editor" your search will usually return many suitable results.
ISTM pidgeonholing software into searchable "categories" makes softwares harder to find. For example: which category should I browse -- "Communication", or "Internet" or "Networking" or ??? -- when searching for an alternative FTP client? The examples you mentioned (Videos, Images) those are even more vague than the FTP example. We should expect to find 'firefox' listed under both those categories?
Maybe by "issues" you're referring to resources ~~ content provided for each software to clearly convey an overview of what the app is, what it does, how it looks? Well, if you have "src" repositories enabled in yours sources.list, synaptic package manager does have the ability to display a screenshot for each given app... but few authors/packagers bother to submit a screenshot. Besides, when you do enable "src" repositories, the overhead in downloading/unpacking the additional repo data REALLY slows each apt update operation.
Did you mark your preferences "show package details in main window"?
If you do, a clickable "project homepage" link is displayed to synaptic's lower right details pane each time you focus a line in top pane.
THAT (visiting project homepage of a soft you're considering to install) is the most enlighting approach, IMO.