dnfdragora VS PackageKit

Personally I just use the command line, or sometimes GNOME Software for GUI applications. However, there's this project called DNFDragora (https://github.com/manatools/dnfdragora) that seems to be what you're looking for, so if that is the only thing keeping you from switching, I don't think you should be too worried about it.

Fedora has dnfdragora, but there is no way to add additional Copr repositories from within this UI. It will show your existing Copr repositories and let you enable, disable, and install packages from them, but not actually add new ones or explore all Copr repositories at once.

It doesn't support flatpak: https://github.com/manatools/dnfdragora/issues/151

It varies by project, but dnfdragora is hosted on GitHub here: https://github.com/manatools/dnfdragora

Although not as good as synaptic, dnfdragora fits the bill. Always takes a bit to start up for me though.

You could try dnfdragora in your terminal if you want to try something like that… https://github.com/manatools/dnfdragora/blob/master/screenshots/dnfdragora-ncurses.png

dnfdragora

The PackageKit crash is a problem in PackageKit itself. You'll want to get a sybolicated backtrace of the crash and submit a bug report to https://github.com/PackageKit/PackageKit/issues/.

The original patch author described another issue from locked packages being installed as a recommends dependency. https://github.com/PackageKit/PackageKit/pull/557

PackageKit-backend-zypp is weird. Some logic is delegated to libzypp so it's however libzypp supports/implements a feature, OTOH some logic requires the PK backend to reimplement. If it doesn't it results in issues like this one https://github.com/PackageKit/PackageKit/pull/557. I don't think this approach is reliable.

The source code.

ALPM integration is not a direct Arch project and done by third party on an as available basis. It might get improvements it might not. It does look quite active https://github.com/PackageKit/PackageKit/commits/main/backends/alpm FWIW but in general Arch isn't really designed with these things in mind. The other bigger distributions also invest/used to invest a lot of time for package descriptions and the like while explicitly and primarily relies on the appstream database for information which may or may not be up to date.

I think what OP is using for updates is the gnome software application which is based on the more general packagekit framework (KDE's discover uses the same framework). And one feature of packagekit is the ability to install updates at shutdown (Sorry, can't find a better link in a quick search)

Luckily, that's on track to finally being fixed. It's been fixed in PackageKit and should only be a matter of time before GNOME Software picks it up: https://github.com/PackageKit/PackageKit/pull/526