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I'm a total newb to packaging, but I managed to get a PPA set up and working. But when I look for my software in Ubuntu Software Center, it will only show up after clicking "Show _ technical items". My software is not a technical item. How do I convey this information to the Software Center so it can appropriately categorize it?

I ship a .desktop file and it shows up in the menu perfectly. Software Center even lists the path to the menu entry after I install it ("Find it in the menu: ...").

EDIT: I spent some time on various Ubuntu IRC channels, and from conversations with a couple different people, the consensus seems to be that there is no way to fix this issue (and a couple others, such as showing an icon) for PPA packages. The way things are now, packages have to be in the main repos to fully integrate with Ubuntu Software Center.

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Technical packages are ones that don't show up in the user menus. That is, if you package ships a .desktop file, it will be considered non-technical.

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But I do ship a .desktop file and it shows up in the menu perfectly. Software Center even lists the path to the menu entry after I install it ("Find it in the menu: ..."). – Jeremy Jul 30 '11 at 18:21
Well, PPAs were supposed to be for techie users, but they became so popular... :P – Fitoschido Aug 2 '11 at 12:13
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That's true. They became popular for good reason, though. For instance, I'm preparing to make my first release of my software, which is a game targeted at a general audience, not just techies. It's much easier to put up a PPA and get some users than it is to get it accepted into the main repos before I actually have any users. I guess I could just put a .deb up on my website (which I will do in addition to a PPA), but PPAs give autoupdating for free, which is very nice. – Jeremy Aug 3 '11 at 2:33

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