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Linen.dev: A 500 kb Slack alternative

linen.dev

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Re: Linen.dev: A 500 kb Slack alternative

#173
post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are positively fixated on being "google searchable" in a way that is really bizarre.

It's because a lot of projects - not just open source (hell, my laptop manufacturer is now linking to their Discord for support) - have moved their support to Discord, and finding anything on Discord is a huge pain, even if their indexer decides to work that day.

It's hard to express how much I dislike Discord as a user

why anyone ever thought hyperactive gamer chat was the right way to offer community and support to their tech product is beyond me

I also don't want it in Slack - Slack is office chat for my job, I don't want to be adding random other stuff in there

Please just use a forum. Discourse seems to be the good/popular one.

Re: Linen.dev: A 500 kb Slack alternative

#174

We actively evaluated Linen in launching our community. Although, we went with discourse as we are going for a forum type community platform but Linen certainly has fantastic potential. One very minor friction point with Linen was, it needs to be a bit transparent about their pricing for business tier. I don't think "contact us" pricing strategy is the perfect fit Linen's target audience.

> we went with discourse as we are going for a forum type community platform

congrats on making the right choice

Re: Linen.dev: A 500 kb Slack alternative

#175

500kB is the size of the web frontend. To that you'd need to add the web browser, the backend, and whatever runtime the backend needs. It's unlikely to be any less than 10MB. Meanwhile I can just write a IRC client in C that's less than 100kB.

It's about how much gets downloaded to your client machine

Re: Linen.dev: A 500 kb Slack alternative

#176
post #37

Not enough discussion here of the parts under "Our Optimization Strategies", which was the most interesting to me. Assorted reactions: > We found that react-icons had an issue that lead to everything being imported. This meant that we were including every single react-icon in our package whether we need it or not. Kudos to the Linen team for proactively finding this - I have a feeling tons of projects blindly trust t…

With icons, I've stopped using icon libraries a while back and now import just the SVG code that I need. I'm a big fan of Hero Icons[1] and they offer a way to quickly copy JSX or SVG code to the clipboard to faciliate this workflow. [1]: https://heroicons.com/

Phosphor icons are also great: https://phosphoricons.com

Re: Linen.dev: A 500 kb Slack alternative

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> tree-shaking Always fascinated when I hear that JS term for what's essentially dead code elimination.

As far as I understand it, that's because it's different. Dead code elimination analyses the code and removes paths that can't be executed. Tree shaking only looks at the imports and removes code that isn't imported from the bundle. If code is imported but not executed, then tree shaking won't remove this code, even though it is dead code. Using a different term is reasonable to avoid confusion, in this case.

I also think terming something in JS culture is much more welcoming than the one that thinks dead code elimination is the way it should be.

Re: Linen.dev: A 500 kb Slack alternative

#178
post #159

Maybe it's just me being slow in the morning, but it's really cool to read the post and only a few seconds later you realise, you're already using the product. :D I'm going to put Linen on my list and I'm curious to see where it's going. The concept of a searchable alternative to 'closed' communities like Discord is promising. I'm wondering, though, if it's essentially a real-time chat experience that perhaps focuses…

> a few seconds later you realise, you're already using the product.

I only realised this after reading your comment. That was an unexpected/pleasant surprise.

Re: Linen.dev: A 500 kb Slack alternative

#179
post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because a lot of projects - not just open source (hell, my laptop manufacturer is now linking to their Discord for support) - have moved their support to Discord, and finding anything on Discord is a huge pain, even if their indexer decides to work that day.

It's hard to express how much I dislike Discord as a user why anyone ever thought hyperactive gamer chat was the right way to offer community and support to their tech product is beyond me I also don't want it in Slack - Slack is office chat for my job, I don't want to be adding random other stuff in there Please just use a forum. Discourse seems to be the good/popular one.

> Please just use a forum. Discourse seems to be the good/popular one.

Honestly it's a shame that forums aren't a big thing anymore.

I especially loved the look and feel of systems like phpBB or SMF forum software. Just really nice readability and usability, good organization of everything and pretty limited hardware requirements. I'd argue that even better in some ways than Discourse, despite its more modern look.

The only problem was that due to how they were deployed (and how many of the PHP codebases were structured), it was challenging to deal with updates and/or plugins.

Re: Linen.dev: A 500 kb Slack alternative

#180

500kB is the size of the web frontend. To that you'd need to add the web browser, the backend, and whatever runtime the backend needs. It's unlikely to be any less than 10MB. Meanwhile I can just write a IRC client in C that's less than 100kB.

And then you need an irc bouncer as well though. And still don't have a fraction of the features.

As somebody that used irc a lot in the day, it's ridiculous to suggest that a protocol that doesn't even save chat history is being compared to the feature rich chat apps of today.

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