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Flutter for Linux

snapcraft.io

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Re: Flutter for Linux

#161

Post by _pmf_ »

akerro wrote: post #56
RivieraKid wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using Flutter in the last few months and agree. It's the best multi-platform solution for mobile , although it still doesn't match native behavior and performance, it only gets close. On the web it's DOA for most use cases - it's just a canvas, so scrolling, text selection, shadow rendering, etc. is custom, doesn't feel native and must be downloaded and compiled. It can have a future on desktop. One "cultur…

>It's the best multi-platform solution for mobile They announced beta version for Windows in the last few weeks, so what to expect? I've been using it on linux desktop for 4 months so far, there were many problems, but it's absolutely the best framework so far. It's miles ahead of Qt (which I've been programming in since 2010). Dart and flutter are just years ahead of Java, C#, Qt and React Native in terms of positiv…

> It's miles ahead of Qt (which I've been programming in since 2010).

Would you mind elaborating?

Re: Flutter for Linux

#162

Post by yxhuvud »

yesimahuman wrote: post #135
vesinisa wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> using the canvas for rendering content This sounds like Flash all over again. Let me guess - no native text select, copy & paste supported? Scrolling is "wrong" in a subtle way?

Yea, Flutter Web isn’t viable and likely never will be. The approach will require re-implementing browser primitives (like copy paste) which means you’re always going to need to ship a ton of JS to clients which makes it antithetical to the PWA approach. EDIT: thanks for the downvote. But you don’t have to take my word for it, this sentiment is (privately) shared by Googlers themselves working on Chrome and PWAs.

Om The flip side, modern javascript frameworks seems to like to reinvent the basic primitives as well (based on how often my back button is broken), so I'm not certain that will be a deal-breaker.

Re: Flutter for Linux

#163

Post by jaekash »

rst wrote: post #52

So, this makes Flutter apps available through Canonical's Snap store... which is Ubuntu-mostly right now, and controversial enough that the top item on the HN front page as I write is about an Ubuntu derivative (Linux Mint) explicitly dropping support for it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23771847

My first thought when seeing this post links to snapstore was "ugh, not that garbage again". Every time I tried using Snappy on fedora it did not work and was so horrible I reverted to immediately removing snappy from my computer afterwards.

Canonical makes garbage software that is superficially easy to use but flimsy and flaky.

Re: Flutter for Linux

#164

Post by tomc1985 »

timsneath wrote: post #101
vesinisa wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> using the canvas for rendering content This sounds like Flash all over again. Let me guess - no native text select, copy & paste supported? Scrolling is "wrong" in a subtle way?

We haven't reached perfection yet (that's why we're still in beta), but our goal is to be _very_ different to Flash in these kinds of areas. Here's an example of text fields: https://gallery.flutter.dev/#/demo/text-field Right-click and you have access to the browser context menu; choose Inspect and you can see a or control.

That demo runs horribly on Firefox.

And clicking around seems to completely ignore my back button.

And hotspots didnt change to the finger cursor.

It looked pretty slick, except for those points. Oh well...

Re: Flutter for Linux

#165

Post by pjmlp »

heavyset_go wrote: post #131
brnt wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hoe is it ahead of Qt (on desktop)?

I'm wondering this, too. While I enjoy Flutter, it doesn't hold a candle to the extensive Qt library and QML.

Specially to the graphical designer tools, or the quality of third party component libraries.

Re: Flutter for Linux

#166

Post by pjmlp »

reactchain wrote: post #140
RivieraKid wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using Flutter in the last few months and agree. It's the best multi-platform solution for mobile , although it still doesn't match native behavior and performance, it only gets close. On the web it's DOA for most use cases - it's just a canvas, so scrolling, text selection, shadow rendering, etc. is custom, doesn't feel native and must be downloaded and compiled. It can have a future on desktop. One "cultur…

Flutter for web feels like going back to the .net "webforms" days, where you could supposedly build a web app the same way as a desktop one and the whole client-server thing was abstracted away. Except it sucked , I still have nightmares about viewstate. Seeing Flutter apps that render everything to canvas feels similar. Developing once for iOS and Android seems obvious and doable, but extending that to the web is a…

Welcome to WebAssembly + WebGL future.

Re: Flutter for Linux

#167

Post by jaekash »

simosx wrote: post #85
rst wrote: post #52

So, this makes Flutter apps available through Canonical's Snap store... which is Ubuntu-mostly right now, and controversial enough that the top item on the HN front page as I write is about an Ubuntu derivative (Linux Mint) explicitly dropping support for it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23771847

Other distributions also use the Snap Store. See the stats for the Skype snap package for the range of Linux distributions, https://snapcraft.io/skype

> Other distributions also use the Snap Store.

Not if I can help it on fedora, and all things I ever tried form there did not work properly.

> See the stats for the Skype snap package for the range of Linux distributions, https://snapcraft.io/skype

Most of those are recycled Ubuntu. Still don't get how the reasoning there works: ah look a garbage distro, let's fork it and make it better? Pick literally anything else.

Re: Flutter for Linux

#168

Post by jaekash »

timsneath wrote: post #59
fungos wrote: post #43

Flutter: yay! Snap: nope! Anyway, hopefully this will cause a push for flutter support on other distros that are snap free.

It's worth noting that Ubuntu support and Snap support are orthogonal. The Flutter work here generates standard ELF binaries that can be distributed outside of Snap, and Canonical's contributions to create a high-quality desktop embedder for Linux are applicable across all distros.

> Canonical ... high-quality

LOL!!!! no but really Canonical is a crap factory, let's not pretend otherwise.

Re: Flutter for Linux

#169

Post by jaekash »

Andrex wrote: post #55
fungos wrote: post #43

Flutter: yay! Snap: nope! Anyway, hopefully this will cause a push for flutter support on other distros that are snap free.

I'm still excited because when Canonical backtracks on Snap in a few years (like they seem to always do when trying to push some homegrown aspect of Linux), their Flutter work will still be there and will have seen years of improvements.

That seems like it would be great, except for that it would still be Canonical's work and with everything they do it would probably be better for everyone if they did not bother.

Re: Flutter for Linux

#170

Post by lultimouomo »

Spivak wrote: post #74
andrepd wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Judging by the example in TFA, we must have very different conceptions of what "beautiful" means. That is an atrocious application. * Ungodly amounts of whitespace (seriously, look at that sidebar, look at that search bar. WHY? too much optimisation for what "looks good on a screenshot", maybe?) * Undecipherable symbols where there's plenty of f#cking space to write labels god damn it * I bet bad/nonexistant keyboard…

You do know that none of that is really do do with Flutter, right? Like you're just taking it out on the designers of Flock.

In defence of GP, the article says

> we’ve seen more than 80,000 fast, beautiful Flutter apps published to Google Play

thus somehow tying the app looks to the fact that they use Flutter.

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