Live data from Hacker News

Building a Slack/Discord alternative with Tauri/Rust

linen.dev

11–20 of 253 posts

Re: Building a Slack/Discord alternative with Tauri/Rust

#11
post #8
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just noticed you advertise a real-time sync with slack/discord, so that just may handle my use-case. Is there a mailing list I could join to be notified when there's mobile clients?

Note that according to the FAQ, Discord syncs hourly. Real-time is a WIP. So the sync would not be great at facilitating live cross-platform discussion yet.

Sorry forgot to update the FAQ. We shipped realtime Discord sync a few months ago Will update it now.

Re: Building a Slack/Discord alternative with Tauri/Rust

#13
post #7

I remember reading about the performance-first development of Linen here on HN a few weeks ago. In that thread I also heard about Zulip for the first time. Both look good. I am not sure which to proselytize to my groups. Most groups I'm in just use Discord because of its momentum, but I really don't like Discord that much - it feels chaotic (I've learned it does have threading and maybe even forum mode now, but nobod…

I feel obligated to extoll enormous praise on Zulip.

I was the person who forced us to try it for a week (so, take a pinch of salt), and people were apprehensive, but I floated the idea of going back to slack recently and was met with open hostility due to how nice Zulip is to use.

It even exceeded my expectations, having only used it briefly with the rust community prior to the trial; basing the trial solely on others on hackernews extolling similar praise to me now.

The thread first model is really great for finding information, the search works decently and integrating with random things is much nicer than with Slack.

its not all sunlit uplands, the UX feels a bit weird sometimes (there is a strong keyboard shortcut system for power users but you can be in the wrong context to use the common hotkeys with no visual indicator) and the mobile app is mediocre at best.

Additionally; a few business people have referred to it as a “nerd tool” and do not put any effort at all into getting over the relatively minor learning curve, but I also believe that they wouldn't truly engage with slack either.

But holistically: its a fantastic system and is a much better use of inefficiencies of electron based messenger clients.

Jitsi is also extremely nice by the way and the pair of Jitsi and Zulip is extremely nice.

Re: Building a Slack/Discord alternative with Tauri/Rust

#14
> Tauri is an open-source electron alternative that is built in Rust.

I'm not familiar with Electron development, but isn't the code mostly JavaScript in that case? Does Rust have a meaningful contribution to the performance and the safety of the codebase here? I feel like Rust part would be "spin up the WebView". There is no code in the repository, so I couldn't check that out myself.

Re: Building a Slack/Discord alternative with Tauri/Rust

#15
post #6

Discord alternative would be a better description, considering Slack isn't meant for communities but companies.

I see it used for communities

The parent said "meant for communities" and not "used for communities".

The biggest difference I see is that Discord is "free" for communities, or at least the model is different: an individual user can apparently pay to contribute to the server and "unlock" features. Also I think Discord just comes with history for free, which is a killer feature in many communities.

Slack is more "meant for companies" in the sense that the "owner" of the server (i.e. the company) has to pay each month for each user. Many open source communities can't afford that, which is why they like the Discord model better.

Disclaimer: I hate both, because they don't have an open API and the Desktop apps use ElectronJS. So I'm not sure if I'm biased towards one or the other :D

Re: Building a Slack/Discord alternative with Tauri/Rust

#16
post #14

> Tauri is an open-source electron alternative that is built in Rust. I'm not familiar with Electron development, but isn't the code mostly JavaScript in that case? Does Rust have a meaningful contribution to the performance and the safety of the codebase here? I feel like Rust part would be "spin up the WebView". There is no code in the repository, so I couldn't check that out myself.

I'm building an app using tauri. More than 70% of the code is rust. The tauri codebase itself consists of a lot of Rust code, and it's based on two substantial rust libraries for cross platform window management and cross platform webview management

Re: Building a Slack/Discord alternative with Tauri/Rust

#17
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that according to the FAQ, Discord syncs hourly. Real-time is a WIP. So the sync would not be great at facilitating live cross-platform discussion yet.

Sorry forgot to update the FAQ. We shipped realtime Discord sync a few months ago Will update it now.

Hey, seems there are a few typos/grammatical errors in the faq, might be due to the recent changes, just thought you should take another look. I’m on my phone otherwise I’d take screenshots and share.

Re: Building a Slack/Discord alternative with Tauri/Rust

#20
> One of the main core differences with Tauri is that it uses a Webview instead of using chromium like in Electron. This means that every desktop application doesn’t have to ship with chromium and can rely on the native browser’s webviews. The downside here is that because it is using Webview you have to deal with different quirks of different operating systems.

ElectronJS is a cross-platform framework. It is bloated because it ships a full cross-platform browser (Chromium) in order... well in order to be cross-platform.

Tauri wants to be less bloated, and therefore removes Chromium. Which makes it... not so cross-platform, apparently.

Genuine question: why not going for a JVM-based technology? That's cross-platform, and it doesn't require a web browser / webview to show text.

Post reply on HN