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A new wave of Linux applications

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Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#421

Post by chakkepolja »

treis wrote: post #171
chakkepolja wrote: post #7

Rise in cross platform frameworks would be a positive trend. When I am writing a flutter application, I often run on desktop directly and resize to mobile shape. That works good enough unless I am writing a mobile-specific feature. This probably means most flutter apps can run on other linux based phones as well.

Cross platform frameworks have already risen in Electron. Every application I use at work runs on Linux. VS Code, Slack, Zoom, Postman, and others I can't think of are all Electron. And they all perform fine. The speed difference between JS and native is meaningless in 99% of cases given how fast modern CPUs are. RAM usage is similar. Everyone complains about it, but I've got 32 GB and I don't get above 8GB usage whe…

I don't think any of the electron applications you mention have mobile-like UIs which can be easily ported to mobile linux.

Also, flutter memory consumption is often 1/3 or 1/4 of the equivalent electron app, which is significant.

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#422

Post by jeroenhd »

audidude wrote: post #299
jeroenhd wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been experimenting with gtk-rs, but the GTK ecosystem is really difficult to get right. The examples are few and far between, and the type exceptions the macro DSL throws are very difficult to parse. All the necessary components are there, but there just aren't enough guides out there to get started. I tried looking into how existing applications use the ecosystem, but experienced GUI developers pull tons of dep…

Assuming you meant "GNOME" Builder rather than GtkBuilder (the template loader for GTK), I'm the author of it and can help figure out what is going wrong on your system wrt not compiling anything. Just file an issue on gitlab and I'll take a look. Usually when we come across bugs like this it's related to distro packaging as we have no hand in that and the Flatpak packages I maintain generally do-as-advertised.

You're right, I did mean the GNOME builder.

I don't know what's wrong exactly, I think it's Flatpak related. From what I remember, it had something to do with a certain version of the GNOME SDK not being installed (I think it was looking for a version of something that didn't exist?) so it failed a dependency check when I hit the install button from the Builder popup. I think this caused the tool to get into a faulty state where it thought the dependency was installed but simultaneously suggested installing the dependency, so it freaked out. I'm usually working on Ubuntu so combining the outdated Ubuntu stable-ish packages with Flatpak's bleeding edge stuff causes issues from time to time.

This could've been a temporary problem and I could've had a streak of bad luck, or maybe my deskop and laptop are somehow just set up plain wrong. I'm no expert in Flatpak internals. I also don't have Builder set up any more so reproducing the problem is kind of hard. Next time I'm giving it a try, I'll try to keep in mind to actually post a bug report.

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#423

Post by rjzzleep »

smoldesu wrote: post #416
rjzzleep wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

libAdwaita is an attempt at providing a consistent framework for making GUI applications in Linux. People commenting on MacOS UX often forget that people creating Mac GUI applications aren't magically better at doing UX than Linux users. It's orders of magnitude easier to make ok looking GUI applications on a mac. Besides the fact that cocoa on mac has evolved over a decade(when linux people were busy constantly rein…

> Besides the fact that cocoa on mac has evolved over a decade(when linux people were busy constantly reinventing gtk themeing engines and display servers) I'll be the first one to concede that Wayland has been more or less a monumental waste of development effort, but can you point to the constant reinvention of themeing engines? Stylesheet modification has been a thing for decades now, there's very little that need…

A few minor critiques are in the wikipedia article[1].

Most of the ones I remember were theme developers dropping support for their themes during minor gtk3 releases. I remember seeing a lot of articles about this, but I wouldn't be able to point you to them now.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GTK#Criticism

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#424

Post by rhizome »

Jenk wrote: post #129
rland wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are times when I'd love to have page up/down on a tablet.

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#425

Post by audidude »

jeroenhd wrote: post #422
audidude wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming you meant "GNOME" Builder rather than GtkBuilder (the template loader for GTK), I'm the author of it and can help figure out what is going wrong on your system wrt not compiling anything. Just file an issue on gitlab and I'll take a look. Usually when we come across bugs like this it's related to distro packaging as we have no hand in that and the Flatpak packages I maintain generally do-as-advertised.

You're right, I did mean the GNOME builder. I don't know what's wrong exactly, I think it's Flatpak related. From what I remember, it had something to do with a certain version of the GNOME SDK not being installed (I think it was looking for a version of something that didn't exist?) so it failed a dependency check when I hit the install button from the Builder popup. I think this caused the tool to get into a faulty…

42 will be out in a couple weeks, and it has a lot of work to make flatpak stuff work better in the presence of "system" installations (rather than user installations where we normally install SDKs).

Hope you'll try it out! (It's also available on Nightly).

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#426

Post by audidude »

malermeister wrote: post #380
audidude wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's called GtkGesture. Just use it. The libadwaita components literally bind the gesture to the ui design pattern widget . If you just don't want the ui design pattern just use the gesture, it's already there waiting for you to make something with it.

I'm not talking about a library, I'm more concerned with DEs implementing the library . Things like swipe with three fingers to switch desktops, swipe up with three fingers to show open windows etc. Why is all that stuff tied to a UI theme?

It's not, you're just confused.

Swipe to switch desktops is implemented in GNOME Shell and Mutter. GNOME Shell's default CSS style is also called Adwaita, but it in no way affects the availability of gestures.

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#427

Post by commandersaki »

bitbang wrote: post #375
wildrhythms wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you never needed to annotate/sign a PDF? On Mac OS just open Preview (the sane default for PDFs), use the annotate tools. There's even a built-in UI for "scanning" a signature via the front-facing camera, the software automatically cuts out the background so you have a signature to drop on the page. Save and the PDF is signed. Trying to do this on Linux requires moving a mountain.

In KDE: - Double Click PDF, Opens it in PDF viewer "Okular" - Select "Stamp" Annotation Tool - Draw region to place stamp - View stamp properties and click to select image source - Select SVG file I always use that has my signature that I created using my wacom tablet. - Adjust placement if needed - Save file Takes all of ~15 seconds. Don't see how that equates to moving mountains.

15 seconds and a wacom tablet. The killer part of the preview.app is that it uses the front facing camera to capture a signature, quite well if i might add.

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#428

Post by allisdust »

ognarb wrote: post #336
cmeacham98 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's cool they have this (mostly) working on mobile, but those gestures are pretty clearly all copied from Android and not a result of KDE Desktop's design decisions.

Plasma Desktop/Mobile developer here The first version of Kirigami (the tookit used by plasma mobile) had a very interesting concept around navigation and people hated it. We still have some remnants of this with some floating buttons that are easy to reach for the thumb but also often on top of the content. I really prefer us to copy a bit the UX of Android/iOS than spending a lot of effort trying to come up with ou…

Please stick to copying the Ux. KDE desktop shines for this very reason that there is no learning curve. First versions should always be heavily inspired by something and later versions can be about innovation.

Thank you for working on KDE!

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#429

Post by 29athrowaway »

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…

You can use FreeOffice instead of LibreOffice, it has a more refined UI.

https://www.freeoffice.com/en/

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#430

Post by 29athrowaway »

malermeister wrote: post #209
traverseda wrote: post #9

I have to say I just don't like Gnome's design. The shift away from text and towards more and more abstract icons, the "don't theme my app movement", removing features I consider pretty essential like typeahead.... Maybe mobile is where their weird (to me) design choices will finally shine though. Also looking forward to what KDE can accomplish in this space.

GNOME has design zealots similar to Apple, but with more bizarre choices. Their whole crusade against tray icons and a usable task list have been painful to deal with. Do they just not like multitasking?? It's sad too, because there's a lot of nice UI/UX in there, it's just buried under all sorts of crazy choices. Thankfully, there's extensions to restore some of the missing functionality. https://extensions.gnome.or…

Plank is probably the dock you want.
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