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A new wave of Linux applications

tuxphones.com

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Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#121

Post by quanticle »

hughrr wrote: post #109
quanticle wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple conceded defeat and we have different interfaces on each device class. Apple hasn't conceded defeat. Every release of MacOS becomes more and more like iOS. Apple keeps releasing tools, such as Catalyst, to make it easier for iOS developers to get their apps to run on MacOS. Apple is very much pursuing convergence between iOS and MacOS, to the latter's detriment.

You can run any app on any platform. It's just going to be a shit experience. Apple want you to get 80% of the way there, then do the last 20% of tailoring it to the device. There isn't some magic unicorn toolkit which can do that last 20%.

That's exactly the problem! There's this idea that, if we automate the 80%, developers will do the last 20%, and we'll end up in a land of milk and honey, where mobile apps scale up their information density and rearrange their UIs to suit the high precision pointing devices and large screens that come with desktops and laptops.

In practice that never happens. Developers make their mobile app, use the automated tool to make it into 80% of a desktop app, hit the publish button and proudly advertise, "Hey, look, we have a desktop app now!"

Maybe it's fine for Apple and Google to ruin their desktop UIs like that. Maybe they don't care, or, more likely, they think that catering to the vast majority of users who are on mobile is an acceptable tradeoff for alienating the few of us who still prefer desktops as their primary computing device.

But why does Linux have to tread that same path?

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#123

Post by kitsunesoba »

rightbyte wrote: post #111
stickfigure wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supporting themes imposes an ongoing technical burden across the whole ecosystem. It's not worth it. You don't hear people say "I hate macs because I can't make my title bars purple".

I'm quite sure you could change system colors willy nilly in OS 8. It was great fun. I miss that part - the feeling of having "your own" system. Since customization where pretty standard back then, it feels like product managers pushing their "vision" rather than technical difficulties preventing that nowadays.

Kaleidoscope and later on Appearance Manager in Classic Mac OS were so much fun. No OS theming system I’ve encountered since have been as capable as those were.

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#124

Post by asddubs »

nomel wrote: post #70
asddubs wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not, but I would love to some day. I fucking hate my android phone (and the iphone is just as terrible, in slightly different and often the same ways). Thank god for the people tinkering on pinephones and purism phones, paving the way for something less awful, with control in the hands of the user We're not there yet, but we won't ever be unless people put effort into it. The linux desktop used to suck, too

To me, phone os is an easy way to get to apps, switch between apps, and handle notifications. It appears to be something else for you. What is an ideal phone for you, and how would Linux help achieve that experience?

I don't like the ridiculous number of settings you have to tweak to stop google from spying on you, 4 settings levels deep somewhere. I don't like that google made phone manufacturers take the "disable location" button out of the quick menu. I don't like the restrictive policies of the app store that is downright prudish, and how every app on the app store is just laden with crap and ads, and often also spies on you (i do use f-droid to circumvent most of that when possible). I don't like how you literally cannot control your phones update behaviour. I don't like how after a couple years, the phone will stop being updated and you'll have to buy a new one or just accept that your phone has security holes that will never be fixed. If you're using a modern phone os, you are fundamentally not in control of the device, and it will make sure at various points to remind you of this.

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#125

Post by InvertedRhodium »

quanticle wrote: post #121
hughrr wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can run any app on any platform. It's just going to be a shit experience. Apple want you to get 80% of the way there, then do the last 20% of tailoring it to the device. There isn't some magic unicorn toolkit which can do that last 20%.

That's exactly the problem! There's this idea that, if we automate the 80%, developers will do the last 20%, and we'll end up in a land of milk and honey, where mobile apps scale up their information density and rearrange their UIs to suit the high precision pointing devices and large screens that come with desktops and laptops. In practice that never happens. Developers make their mobile app, use the automated tool…

> But why does Linux have to tread that same path?

It doesn't, which is the beauty of open source. If enough people value this as much as you clearly do, there will always be options out there.

And, if there aren't enough people then you always have the (less practical, but still doable) option of rolling your own.

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#126

Post by hughrr »

quanticle wrote: post #121
hughrr wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can run any app on any platform. It's just going to be a shit experience. Apple want you to get 80% of the way there, then do the last 20% of tailoring it to the device. There isn't some magic unicorn toolkit which can do that last 20%.

That's exactly the problem! There's this idea that, if we automate the 80%, developers will do the last 20%, and we'll end up in a land of milk and honey, where mobile apps scale up their information density and rearrange their UIs to suit the high precision pointing devices and large screens that come with desktops and laptops. In practice that never happens. Developers make their mobile app, use the automated tool…

Linux doesn't have to tread the same path but there's no one behind it all waving a big stick when they go off track. Which is why we end up in a fragmented half baked mess every damn time and why I'm sitting here on a mac after 20 years of being promised linux on the desktop

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#127

Post by habosa »

These apps look very nice, I am happy to see this movement. But this is HN so ... allow me to go a bit off topic and complain.

Why is is so freaking hard to install an app on Linux (Ubuntu)? There's nothing in the software center, and when I find an app I want I am just pointed to a .tar.gz or something. I want a file I can double-click and end up with a launchable icon representing that app in my dock later. I would also like to be able to update that app easily in the future. I have yet to have this experience with an app I wanted despite using Ubuntu for years.

This is why I have given up and just started using Windows with WSL. Then I can have all the command-line tools I like and also a sane app installation experience.

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#128

Post by nikodunk »

seltzered_ wrote: post #18

This could be less about device convergence and more about UX improvements and design coherence among apps. Some examples of what's been happening: - Touchpad gestures through various efforts: https://linuxtouchpad.org - Gnome: libAdwaita: https://blogs.gnome.org/alexm/2021/12/31/libadwaita-1-0/ - Core workflows getting better first-class approaches rather than being another app to install: (e.g. screenshots & screen…

Excellent links - thank you so much for the resources.

I'm very excited to see what the Pinephone Pro brings as a platform to build towards in this regard. I'm already eyeing shipping some apps on Flathub!

I hope the React Native => Flathub pipeline gets built out, similar to what Ubuntu is doing with Flutter => Snap. Exciting times!

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#129

Post by Jenk »

rland wrote: post #64
floren wrote: post #36

These applications look really pretty and all, but for my selfish purposes, I just really want real goddamn scrollbars back. I use a mouse that doesn't have a scroll wheel, but for the life of me I've been unable to figure out how to make applications like Firefox just give me a real scroll bar on the side of the window that's thick enough to grab without fiddly pixel-hunting.

I found a solution for Firfox on Ubuntu MATE: 1. go to about:config 2. find widget.non-native-theme.scrollbar.size.override 3. Change to some pixel value (I have mine set at 26). voila! I do not understand why the default is so thin. Really bucks the trend of every UI element being touch-screen large nowadays!

> I do not understand why the default is so thin.

For scroll/touch users, the scrollbar has become an indicator only, and not so much a tool for scrolling, to show where on the document the window is.

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#130

Post by kodah »

seltzered_ wrote: post #18

This could be less about device convergence and more about UX improvements and design coherence among apps. Some examples of what's been happening: - Touchpad gestures through various efforts: https://linuxtouchpad.org - Gnome: libAdwaita: https://blogs.gnome.org/alexm/2021/12/31/libadwaita-1-0/ - Core workflows getting better first-class approaches rather than being another app to install: (e.g. screenshots & screen…

libadwaita and Kirigami are huge improvements for the desktop app ecosystem from what I've seen as a user. When I started to delve into desktop applications I quickly realized there's a couple hurdles I face:

1. QT was an ecosystem shock to me. I barely knew what to do to get started and got lost easily.

2. Do these applications work outside of Linux; more directly, do they have dynamic dependencies? From my experience, the former is difficult and the answer to the latter is yes.

3. The lack of library support for Go and Rust is notable. Sometimes I want to throw a UI on top of what used to be a terminal app written in Go (or Rust).

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