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Ubuntu Makes Flutter ‘Default Choice’ for Future Desktop Apps

omgubuntu.co.uk

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

#31

Post by preommr »

I am bringing some negative energy but I've been burned.

I don't understand the hype about flutter - putting aside that dart is a tool that made more sense in a different timeline, or that some of the examples seem really slow/buggy, or that it's rendering behavior is a nightmare to guarantee consistency - putting all that aside, I've yet to see anyone build anything non-trivial with flutter.

And then there's Ubuntu. Canonical is just all over the place. There was Unity, there was their weird mobile phone, there was their mobile OS, the weird ads in desktop searches. I am doubtful anytime I see anything Ubuntu related.

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

#32

Post by ToddWBurgess »

As both a Flutter dev and an Ubuntu user, I am thrilled by the news. Looking forward to seeing how it all works out.

In a nutshell, if anyone is interested how this works, the Flutter apps will be converted and compiled as GTK3 apps. Dart has the FFI package so it's fairly simple as a Flutter dev to do C system calls in Dart. This will of course stop your app from being cross platform out of the box (but I doubt this is a concern for the Ubuntu team).

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

#33

Post by butz »

With default theme "Yaru" supported by community, Ubuntu is introducing whole new framework, that will require quite a bit of work to make it look similar to native applications. They should stick with GTK, as GTK4 has made some really nice performance improvements and can be used with many different programming languages: C, Python, Javascript (GJS), Vala, just to name a few.

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

#34

Post by ldiracdelta »

arusahni wrote: post #24
candiddevmike wrote: post #4

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

The KDE foundation is in the mix to ensure an open source path: http://www.olafsw.de/a-better-qt-because-of-open-source-and-...

however, https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-community/2020q2/006098.h...

End of last year they did release 6.0, so it looks like they're not hiding their releases for a year. You won't get the LTS fixes, for a year though.

For me, this means I have to stay on 5.15 until 6.2( because of location module) is one year released -- summer 2022.

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

#35

Post by CodeArtisan »

foepys wrote: post #9
candiddevmike wrote: post #4

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 based on Dart which compiles AOT to machine code.

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

#36

Post by jeswin »

preommr wrote: post #31

I am bringing some negative energy but I've been burned. I don't understand the hype about flutter - putting aside that dart is a tool that made more sense in a different timeline, or that some of the examples seem really slow/buggy, or that it's rendering behavior is a nightmare to guarantee consistency - putting all that aside, I've yet to see anyone build anything non-trivial with flutter. And then there's Ubuntu.…

> Canonical is just all over the place.

We should encourage experimentation and risk taking. No company can always get things right.

Phones are a duopoly, but I'm glad they tried. Unity was fairly decent, but in the end adopting Gnome benefitted everyone. Ads were the only bad idea I can think of; but hey I've been using their wonderful software for 15 years now at a total cost of zero.

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

#37

Post by CodeArtisan »

josteink wrote: post #14

I guess that makes Dart a less dead language than it used to be, but from what I can tell there’s almost no momentum around Dart at all. Basing your future applications on a language which seemingly is already slipping into its coffin (even discounting the regular Google discontinuing thing), seems like a really weird choice.

Since the releases of Flutter and Fuschia, the development of Dart went tenfolds. Devs post performance improvement reports from time to time.

https://medium.com/flutter/flutter-performance-updates-in-th...

https://medium.com/flutter/flutter-performance-updates-in-20...

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

#39

Post by jeswin »

candiddevmike wrote: post #4

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…

> VScode is a shining example of what that can accomplish

I see this mentioned quite often here, but that's not a valid argument in favour of Electron Apps.

VSCode is the primary focus for a user when it's active - so it's fine if it takes up a significant proportion of a machine's resources. Now if a bunch of background taskbar apps, calculators and notepads start doing the same, user experience is going to go downhill very quickly.

So basically, Electron is a good choice for apps in which you spend a lot of time; and a poor choice to be a preferred platform for an OS.

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

#40

Post by wenc »

zodiakzz wrote: post #19
foepys wrote: 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.

In fact, I was using VS Code on 10 year old Core 2 Duo 2GHz machine up to a year ago. Without extensions, the responsiveness was fine -- definitely not as responsive as gvim, but otherwise no complaints.

When I added extensions, it did start to feel laggy but once I turned off all extensions save one (the language server extension -- in my case, Python) it was fine again.

With my current machine (a refurbed 2014 Intel i7 Dell desktop), VS Code is pretty responsive even with extensions enabled.

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