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Make Apps for Linux

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Re: Make Apps for Linux

#331

Post by mobiuscog »

Dalewyn wrote: post #237
pizza234 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If that's not stable, I don't know what is. What is? An immense amount of resources (developers) poured into developing live patches to make applications work on each newer version of Windows (or helping the application developers fix their applications). It's an interesting conceptual grey area - I don't consider it backward compatibility in a strict sense. This is documented in the book "The old new thing" by Ray…

It's because Microsoft understands and respects that computers and operating systems exist to let the user achieve things. The user ultimately doesn't care if his computer is an x86 or an ARM or a RISC-V, or if it's running Windows or Mac or Linux or Android. What the user cares about is running Winamp to whip some llama's ass, or more likely opening Excel to get work done or fire up his favorite games to have fun. M…

And yet Windows 11 keeps taking away user control, becoming more like Apple every update.

Re: Make Apps for Linux

#332

Post by worksonmine »

bitwize wrote: post #278
worksonmine wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get used to it as in "used to how CLI programs are usually designed". Just as you get used to what the select icon in a GUI does. Without any prior experience in any both seem like alien technology, but coming from GUI to CLI you have the bias of already knowing one when comparing. People claim macOS is intuitive and everything works the same, but I'm handicapped in it. I just call it inexperience not being bad U…

The difference is, you can teach a user who's never seen a computer before to work with a GUI in an afternoon, maybe a weekend -- and if the GUI is well-designed, the skills they learn on one program will transfer well to others. Meanwhile, there are XKCDs about how even experts can't remember how to work tar: https://xkcd.com/1168/ Before 1984, computer UX was, universally, sucky. As Alan Kay put it, the Mac was the…

Ease of use isn't the only metric for "peak UX" though, composability and how the programs interact should also be taken into consideration. Selecting a filter on instagram is very easy, with the caveat that you're limited to those filters alone. The subject is more complex than clicking buttons vs typing commands.

Re: Make Apps for Linux

#333

Post by creesch »

ElectricalUnion wrote: post #207
creesch wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What external dependencies does Java need that's not in the JDK itself? I mean that it doesn't come with Java itself, but you as a developer need to pick a UI framework and not all of them actually work all that well cross platform or will get you an actual modern interface. Edit: I should also note that the threshold for entry I am talking about is for people just generally starting out. There simply are way more…

> Also, when you start bundling your JDKs I am not sure you can talk about a smaller footprint anymore. What, do you bundle Electron source and Electron build environment with your Electron app? Why would you do the same and bundle Java source code + Java compilers in your Java app? Why would you do the same and bundle source code + compilers in your app? If you need to create a "just works without dependency b.s." e…

> If you need to create a "just works without dependency b.s." experience in Java, you use the correct tooling for that, jlink.

At which point you are including a similar footprint as Electron does by shipping chrome. I mean, you must have realized I was talking about the inclusion of the JRE and whatever else is needed to make a java application run on a system as a standalone application.

So I am honestly not sure what you are arguing besides semantics.

Re: Make Apps for Linux

#334

Post by rollcat »

zer0zzz wrote: post #106
pjmlp wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That core would be GNOME or KDE frameworks, coupled with the FreeDesktop standards, at least that was the plan about 20 years ago. However as the site says doing distributions is what most folks keep doing, and naturally there isn't a single stack that can keep up with snowflake distributions. In the end, Google took the Linux kernel, placed two core set of frameworks, one in Java, and the other in JavaScript, and na…

None of that core is standardized across even a hand full of distros.

Which is the entire point. Having working software beats having a standard. (Naturally having working software that adheres to a standard is even better, but at least they got their priorities right.)

Re: Make Apps for Linux

#335

Post by mnd999 »

samus wrote: post #305
mikrotikker wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's got more security holes than Swiss cheese.

You're living in the past. Applets and Flash lost against the HTML/JS/CSS stack and Oracle owned up to it. Applets are terminally deprecated now. Edit: admittedly, one of the reasons for that was that the sandbox was indeed prone to security holes. Also, the developer ergonomy of the SecurityManager was unsatisfying for both JDK and app developers. Good riddance.

Applets are still a thing. We just call them webasm and canvas these days.

Re: Make Apps for Linux

#336

Post by pjmlp »

mkup wrote: post #329
arp242 wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux can do this; binaries from the 90s work today. Something like xv (last release: 1994, although the binaries were built against Red Hat 5.2 from 1998) still work today, and the source still builds with one very minor patch last time I tried it. The problem running the binaries is: % ldd ./usr/X11R6/bin/xv linux-gate.so.1 (0xf7f82000) libX11.so.6 => /usr/lib32/libX11.so.6 (0xf7e22000) libjpeg.so.62 => not found l…

Much of the Windows compatibility is "just" stable API for Windows controls, GUI event handling loops, 3D graphics and sound (DirectX). Linux has stable API for files and sockets (POSIX), but that's all.

This is also the biggest different between proper desktop operating systems since forever, and the fragmented Linux distributions.

Available API means the whole stack, everything needed to write applications end to end, regardless of their purppose, not CLI and daemons.

Re: Make Apps for Linux

#337

Post by pjmlp »

sph wrote: post #321
pjmlp wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Just browse their documentation, that is the kind of development experience GNOME and KDE were expected to provide, 20 years ago, yet fail short due to Linux distributions fragmentation, the devs using other environments, or still stuck with plain window managers and xterms workflows.

If only GNOME and KDE were backed by one of the largest companies in the world, with tens of billions of dollars at its disposal.

If you mean Red-Hat in regards to GNOME, they have long moved away from Desktop Linux for consumers, as there is no money to be made there.

The Slashdot posts on the matter from those days are quite easy to find.

GNOME like CDE in his day, is good enough for corporate users to connect into Linux servers.

GNOME today is also not the same as GNOME 20 years ago, it got rebooted multiple times with incompatible code, glade was dropped and now people are expected to write their GUIs in code or manual XML code (yes I am aware of the Web based ongoing replacement, what a broken idea for a native desktop), and plenty of other issues that make GNOME in 2023 even less atractive than 20 years ago.

Re: Make Apps for Linux

#338

Post by pjmlp »

jcelerier wrote: post #259
sylware wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has the case for 10 years with games on steam. The worst being libstdc++ ABI issues still around because many devs forget to statically link their c++ libs with -static-libstdc++. Because in windows, ABI stability is really good and then devs are used to that.

?? on windows you always have to ship the libc/libc++ along with your app, as part of the VS redistributables. That's pretty much the same than static linking, the symbols are just not in the same binary.

Not since Universal C Runtime was created, and made part of Windows 10 systems components.

Re: Make Apps for Linux

#339

Post by Kalanos »

cardanome wrote: post #49
Kalanos wrote: post #14

I recently switched from Mac to Linux so that I can use beefy refurbished machines as my daily driver. I've installed Linux on lots of different machines previously, but this time it's not just a hobby. Ubuntu has great support for my hardware and peripherals, but the app store feels unfinished and forced. Pretty much everything works as expected. I'm interested in checking out Mint (also Debian) and Arch, but it fee…

Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu. You can use all Ubuntu packages just fine. It is really just a strictly better Ubuntu. There is a Debian-based Mint version as well but that is more as a security so that they are not deadly dependent on the Ubuntu people. Though these days, even using exotic distros isn't that problematic, as you can always use appimage/flatpack/snap if you native package manager doesn't have the speci…

Mint looks awesome! It seems like it was designed by people that actually compute. My main gripe w ubuntu was the snap store, but embracing flatpak/hub seems like a highlight of mint

Re: Make Apps for Linux

#340

Post by xcdzvyn »

Longhanks wrote: post #252
emptysongglass wrote: post #214

There's a lot of complaints that there isn't much in the way of tooling to create cross-OS compatible apps but I disagree. Just looking at solutions which aren't Electron: - Telegram uses Qt and ships a performant native app across all three OSes - Flutter compiles down to native code across all three (and mobile) - Kirigami is a QtQuick framework that will give you an executable app across all mobile and desktop tar…

Except Flutter is a subpar experience on every platform because of just how slightly different it behaves and Kirigami / Qt Quick is just not a viable thing, there's barely any community and/or "serious" project on Windows, macOS or mobile. I'm not trying to discredit the KDE folks, but that is reality. Also, Qt Quick licensing is not so easy (or very expensive if you go commercial) for iOS. Whereas electron has a) b…

Yeah, last I fiddled with Flutter on the web, the performance was awful and it felt horrible to interact with. Apparently it's fair on mobile though.
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