thanks @ryangorley thanks for posting your updated ideas.

I am a little bit surprised by "No ability to see what is installed at a glance (one has to click on a package)". On the screenshot just above this statement, you can see the Installed menu item on the left navigation pane !

svg-version

Ryan Gorley

Here is a concept in progress. The attempt is to imagine a software center that is sleek, efficient, and 100% Solus. The prominent search/filter and layout are inspired by the Budgie & Brisk menus, the breadcrumb navigation from Nautilus. A banner would give us some space to have fun. Because most packages don't have good icons, I'd probably de-emphasis those, except perhaps in the case of the featured packages. I'm trying to think through the rest. Not sure about third-party yet. [...]"

Here you can find many/all available cursor modes. From there you can tell that a bunch of them are broken (I dunno why)... so I guess YouTube uses one of those broken cursors.