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Ubuntu Makes Flutter ‘Default Choice’ for Future Desktop Apps

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21–30 of 120 posts

Re: Ubuntu Makes Flutter ‘Default Choice’ for Future Desktop Apps

#21

> After all, people have been predicting that web-based tech will be the next big thing on desktop for as long as I’ve been writing this blog — i.e. eons. And yet it never quite happens. Electron apps, for instance, are, like Flutter, popular with web devs but desktop users? Well, they’re less keen. Lost me here. I don't think most users care whether their apps run Electron or .NET or Python/QT or whatever so long as…

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Re: Ubuntu Makes Flutter ‘Default Choice’ for Future Desktop Apps

#22
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electron apps use more CPU and drain the battery faster on my Linux laptop. Users may not care what framework renders their apps, but if they were running more than one or two electron instances they may start to notice their battery life is awful. It’s worse on Linux already, there’s no reason to make it even worse.

Faster than? Do you compare applications that do similar things?

Other text editors. Other chat apps. Other music players. The same apps before Electron.

Re: Ubuntu Makes Flutter ‘Default Choice’ for Future Desktop Apps

#23
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fear the day we replace everything with JavaScript. All JavaScript apps are so unbelievably slow compared to native apps with native toolkits. At work I need to use MS Teams and holy shit it's so slow and if I'm compiling code it's barely usable on an 8 core processor. I had better performance with chat clients in 2002 on hardware that was about 1% as fast as mine today. VS Code is also very slow, you just don't no…

>VS Code is also very slow, you just don't notice it as much on today's machines. Seemed to be running great on Core 2 Duo machines of the kids learning coding at a remote village I visited recently.

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Re: Ubuntu Makes Flutter ‘Default Choice’ for Future Desktop Apps

#24

I wish they would expand on what's wrong with Qt or GTK. Flutter support on both Windows and Linux is pretty bad. In my opinion, electron is a better choice for cross platform desktop UI--VScode is a shining example of what that can accomplish. And they're in for a lot of work if they want to customize Flutter so it doesn't look material or cupertino. Also, their big contribution to Flutter is getting it on the snap…

As a KDE fan, the recent changes to QT's licensing have me concerned. [1] Given that Flutter compiles to native code, and doesn't require shipping a V8 engine with each application like Electron, this seems like a reasonable decision for them to make.

1: https://www.qt.io/blog/qt-offering-changes-2020

Re: Ubuntu Makes Flutter ‘Default Choice’ for Future Desktop Apps

#25
post #9

I wish they would expand on what's wrong with Qt or GTK. Flutter support on both Windows and Linux is pretty bad. In my opinion, electron is a better choice for cross platform desktop UI--VScode is a shining example of what that can accomplish. And they're in for a lot of work if they want to customize Flutter so it doesn't look material or cupertino. Also, their big contribution to Flutter is getting it on the snap…

I fear the day we replace everything with JavaScript. All JavaScript apps are so unbelievably slow compared to native apps with native toolkits. At work I need to use MS Teams and holy shit it's so slow and if I'm compiling code it's barely usable on an 8 core processor. I had better performance with chat clients in 2002 on hardware that was about 1% as fast as mine today. VS Code is also very slow, you just don't no…

Flutter is far more worrying IMO. The Web at least is somewhat standardized and definitely going to last long. There's also nothing intrinsically too slow about it, JS runtimes can definitely be made fast and render engines tend to improve over time, it's also likely we will move on from Electron and it's bloat-packed delivery method. Everything is easily inspect-able as shipped.

Compared to that Flutter programs are a huge black-box, completely unportable as delivered not just across platforms but also between accessibility mechanisms it seems. While practically sharing none of the advantages of traditional native toolkits. Responsiveness is dismal, web/desktop targets are basically a PoC, the language and toolkit are so large it's extremely unlikely people will bother maintaining it when Google deprecates it, even if it's 100 times more popular than now. It's just disheartening how people are still keen on developing things far too likely to end in a platform graveyard.

Re: Ubuntu Makes Flutter ‘Default Choice’ for Future Desktop Apps

#26

I wish they would expand on what's wrong with Qt or GTK. Flutter support on both Windows and Linux is pretty bad. In my opinion, electron is a better choice for cross platform desktop UI--VScode is a shining example of what that can accomplish. And they're in for a lot of work if they want to customize Flutter so it doesn't look material or cupertino. Also, their big contribution to Flutter is getting it on the snap…

Qt is going commercial only. GTK+ feels kinda old when working on it and GTK team likes to break compatibility. Flutter is also quite bad often, dependency hell on big projects is so much hotter than anything I've ever seen on npm. Flutter is smooth, maturing fast, developing in Dart is simply pleasant.

Re: Ubuntu Makes Flutter ‘Default Choice’ for Future Desktop Apps

#27
post #9

I wish they would expand on what's wrong with Qt or GTK. Flutter support on both Windows and Linux is pretty bad. In my opinion, electron is a better choice for cross platform desktop UI--VScode is a shining example of what that can accomplish. And they're in for a lot of work if they want to customize Flutter so it doesn't look material or cupertino. Also, their big contribution to Flutter is getting it on the snap…

I fear the day we replace everything with JavaScript. All JavaScript apps are so unbelievably slow compared to native apps with native toolkits. At work I need to use MS Teams and holy shit it's so slow and if I'm compiling code it's barely usable on an 8 core processor. I had better performance with chat clients in 2002 on hardware that was about 1% as fast as mine today. VS Code is also very slow, you just don't no…

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Re: Ubuntu Makes Flutter ‘Default Choice’ for Future Desktop Apps

#29

I wish they would expand on what's wrong with Qt or GTK. Flutter support on both Windows and Linux is pretty bad. In my opinion, electron is a better choice for cross platform desktop UI--VScode is a shining example of what that can accomplish. And they're in for a lot of work if they want to customize Flutter so it doesn't look material or cupertino. Also, their big contribution to Flutter is getting it on the snap…

IMO they are bidding on Flutter hoping that it'll become next big thing replacing Android. It'll allow for easy porting mobile apps to Linux. Time will tell whether they're right or not. They made some failed bids in the past (Mir, upstart), but at least they're trying to move.

Could be. Maybe they learnt from Ubuntu Mobile, where they wanted app developers to write QT apps, instead of having support for e.g. apk files (the payoff for the time invested in writing a separate app for Ubuntu phones was never going to be there, unfortunately).

I think it's a positive that they're moving to a more common platform that is easier for developers to produce a build for. Good luck to them.

Re: Ubuntu Makes Flutter ‘Default Choice’ for Future Desktop Apps

#30
post #16
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fear the day we replace everything with JavaScript. All JavaScript apps are so unbelievably slow compared to native apps with native toolkits. At work I need to use MS Teams and holy shit it's so slow and if I'm compiling code it's barely usable on an 8 core processor. I had better performance with chat clients in 2002 on hardware that was about 1% as fast as mine today. VS Code is also very slow, you just don't no…

I don't think it's safe to generalize "x is slow and electron, y is fast and native" to mean "native is fast". Electron lowering barrier to entry also means it's used by projects who aren't going to carefully profile their app no matter what, so the same app written as a native app would also be garbage. At least some of it is "correlation not causation" And for your chat example, when I was at IBM the Sametime chat…

Electron lowers barriers for people who know web development already. Not generally.

Lotus apps were known for being unusually slow. Visual Studio Code is known for being unusually fast for an Electron app. And it still chokes on files Sublime Text handles easily.

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