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Anthropic, please ship an official Claude Desktop for Linux

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Re: Anthropic, please ship an official Claude Desktop for Linux

#91

Post by aaddrick »

seabrookmx wrote: post #69
aaddrick wrote: post #26

Hey! I manage the unofficial build at https://github.com/aaddrick/claude-desktop-debian Debian is in the name, but scope has grown to all backends, compositors, etc. The main reason must companies don't publish Linux electron apps is fragmentation. If you're doing anything more than rendering a webpage as an app, it starts to get complicated. I've got a bank of VM's setup for testing, and I still need it up.

Have you considered flatpak support? I know it's has its rough edges, but I use many apps across arch/Fedora/Ubuntu that are delivered as a single flatpak.

I've looked on the rare occasion, but no one is asking for it on the repo, so hadn't been a priority like other distribution channels.

It's great that I can ship one item for all platforms, but Flatpack doesn't solve the compatibility discovery problem for me.

More context in my reply to the comment linked here :https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48434436#48435661

Re: Anthropic, please ship an official Claude Desktop for Linux

#92

Post by tormeh »

Aurornis wrote: post #86
Normal_gaussian wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels analogous to the old Google latency improvement story - improve performance and p99 goes up, not down, because more people are now able to use your product. These angry customers are a symptom of having more customers; in this direction (compatibility) companies shouldn't be KPI'ing on angry customers. It is very legitimate that high compatibility means more very obscure, low value, high cost, bug reports…

> These angry customers are a symptom of having more customers; No, it's a symptom of having more of a very specific type of customer who is more demanding and difficult to please than your other customers. When you don't officially support Linux, the Linux users are not surprised. It's normal for them. They find other ways to use the product. When you do announce Linux support, you open Pandora's box of complaints.…

This is when you say "We support Ubuntu", and honestly that's fine.

Re: Anthropic, please ship an official Claude Desktop for Linux

#93

Post by aaddrick »

seabrookmx wrote: post #75
sgt wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Biggest problem with Linux apps - i.e. distributed with ease the way that Windows and macOS apps are distributed, is the lack of a stable ABI. If you asked me about this 20 years ago I'd say in 2026 there'd for sure be a stable ABI, but no.

Everyone parrots this but I don't think it's true. The Linux kernel does famously have a stable ABI (we "don't break user space" after all). The issue is folks expect this to be at a higher level, so when libc or GTK or Qt etc. have breaking changes, all your apps using the old versions fail. This is a legitimate pain point with traditional distros.. I don't want to sound like I'm downplaying it. However, this is bas…

My reply to the comment below outlines the shape of the problem.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48434436#48435801

Re: Anthropic, please ship an official Claude Desktop for Linux

#95

Post by shepherdjerred »

Retr0id wrote: post #5

If only Anthropic had some kind of automated tool that was good at porting software

Even if you can create infinite software you still have to be very intentional about what you’re choosing to work on.

There’s still a cost to testing, support, planning, etc even if coding is now “free”

Re: Anthropic, please ship an official Claude Desktop for Linux

#96

Post by thewebguyd »

WD-42 wrote: post #84
Aurornis wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electron apps don’t work well across all of the Linux distributions if you’re doing anything that isn’t very simple. The comment was that the Electron apps aren’t being released for Linux even when they exist because Linux is so much harder to support, even in Electron. If they don’t have resources (or desire) to keep the Electron app working on all the Linux distros then they definitely won’t have the resources to w…

Anything that isn’t very simple? Like a llm chat interface? If zoom and Microsoft Teams of all people can do it, anthropic should be able to. Have you considered that maybe their code is just bad?

Microsoft gave up on teams for linux, the app that's available now is a community electron webapp wrapper, and Zoom isn't electron at all, its QT but they chose the path of only supporting a few distros (Ubuntu, Debian, Mint, RedHat) and they also don't rely on system QT versions, they vendor it.

If your app is open source, I say just build & test on one of the major distros and let the community port it to others. If its closed source, well, good luck. But if what the parent said is true, that you now collect a bunch of very vocal pissed off customers because you didn't support their favorite distro, then its just not worth it at the current marketshare that desktop Linux has.

There's also the challenge of you just can't make any assumptions about what may be present or not on someone's Linux machine, even with the major distros.

Re: Anthropic, please ship an official Claude Desktop for Linux

#98

Post by trumpdong »

Aurornis wrote: post #64
aaddrick wrote: post #26

Hey! I manage the unofficial build at https://github.com/aaddrick/claude-desktop-debian Debian is in the name, but scope has grown to all backends, compositors, etc. The main reason must companies don't publish Linux electron apps is fragmentation. If you're doing anything more than rendering a webpage as an app, it starts to get complicated. I've got a bank of VM's setup for testing, and I still need it up.

> The main reason must companies don't publish Linux electron apps is fragmentation. If you're doing anything more than rendering a webpage as an app, it starts to get complicated. Can confirm. At a past company we worked hard to release a Linux desktop client for our customers who wanted it, even though the number was small. It turns into compatibility hell very fast. You think you can target a couple recent Ubuntu…

Reminds me that I occasionally have to set _JAVA_AWT_WM_NONREPARENTING=1 because it's not always inherited from my login shell. Otherwise Java windows won't display anything because I suppose Java waits for them to be reparented.

Re: Anthropic, please ship an official Claude Desktop for Linux

#99

Post by [deleted] »

WD-42 wrote: post #84
Aurornis wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electron apps don’t work well across all of the Linux distributions if you’re doing anything that isn’t very simple. The comment was that the Electron apps aren’t being released for Linux even when they exist because Linux is so much harder to support, even in Electron. If they don’t have resources (or desire) to keep the Electron app working on all the Linux distros then they definitely won’t have the resources to w…

Anything that isn’t very simple? Like a llm chat interface? If zoom and Microsoft Teams of all people can do it, anthropic should be able to. Have you considered that maybe their code is just bad?

[deleted]

Re: Anthropic, please ship an official Claude Desktop for Linux

#100

Post by robby_w_g »

lioeters wrote: post #62
Lionga wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use the existing Slop they have that needs 1GB of Ram for a simple Terminal app to create an even more slopped Linux app... If only they had any devs at their 500K and way up pay package that could actually write a simple app, that you know does not suck.

Those highly paid human devs are hard at work on the Torment Nexus, which is their priority of course, you don't want China to win do you?

Torment doomers claim that the commodification of humanity’s suffering will usher in a dark age, but quarterly earnings have never been higher. I trust that Death Star Inc has humanity’s best interests at heart.
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