This is like begging Microsoft to port SQL Server to Linux. Anthropic is a proprietary walled garden with poor service trading solely on dominance in a single product field, just like Microsoft with its business tools. Yet people are clamoring to become more dependent on them. Those same complaints you hear from Windows users today? Will be the complaints from Claude users in the future. No choice but to put up with it. What else are you gonna do, learn to use Codex? Your company won't pay for it because the users prefer the one tool they already know how to use. Funny how history repeats itself.
Anthropic, please ship an official Claude Desktop for Linux
221–230 of 331 posts
Re: Anthropic, please ship an official Claude Desktop for Linux
#222What do you miss from the Desktop app that the CLI doesn’t cover? I’m mostly on Linux too and have just been using the CLI, so I’m curious.
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Re: Anthropic, please ship an official Claude Desktop for Linux
#223Re: Anthropic, please ship an official Claude Desktop for Linux
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Just put some instructions on your website telling the user what to type into their shell? If they can't handle that, I guess it's the browser client.
Re: Anthropic, please ship an official Claude Desktop for Linux
#225This is like begging Microsoft to port SQL Server to Linux. Anthropic is a proprietary walled garden with poor service trading solely on dominance in a single product field, just like Microsoft with its business tools. Yet people are clamoring to become more dependent on them. Those same complaints you hear from Windows users today? Will be the complaints from Claude users in the future. No choice but to put up with…
SQL Server does have a Linux version though lol
Re: Anthropic, please ship an official Claude Desktop for Linux
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh please. The super key is the windows key. You come across as someone who has never used a computer before.
And that this key is called "superkey" is a widespread standard on computers? Or just linux? I think the latter. And it might surprise you, but there are computers with no linux installed. I think the vast majority actually. So why the need for insults?
Pretending like the person I'm responding to isn't being willfully ignorant isn't helping. It's pretty simple to guess what "super key" means just from context, if not, it's a very quick (in the op's case) llm query away. Let's be real here.
Re: Anthropic, please ship an official Claude Desktop for Linux
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
You compile for the lowest possible Linux kernel and bundle your libs. Don't use container formats for stuff like this. tar.gz with an installer script is king. I dunno why this is always so difficult.
From experience: I work on a small team maintaining build infrastructure for my entire company. My goal, as much as possible, is to maintain a single build environment that can serve all purposes. But it has proven quite the challenge to support old Linux distros. We have tried using nix to pin deps, but this easily leads to new issues: hardcoded RPATHs leaking into binaries, glibc compatibility issues, etc. If we in…
Me too but my job is easier since I can target a specific version of ubuntu so I'm making debs and I don't have that problem.
I have recently been working on a C11 GTK+ based task manager where I run into this. https://github.com/hparadiz/evemon/tree/main/packaging
This is why I said bundle your libs. If you bundle ALL of your libs you can't possibly run into an issue if your install script is run as root. Unless it's an extremely eccentric non desktop oriented system at which point that's kind of on them.
If you wanna cover 99.9% of Linux you build fedora, ubuntu, debian, nixos, arch and have a tar.gz as your overflow. For each target the lowest available LTS and don't waste time on distros that aren't getting security updates. It's not reasonable to ask for binaries built against your specific 11 year old gcc.
edit wanted to add one more thing.
I'm a big believer in having your tar.gz and install script inform your deb, rpm, aur, etc. It should be basically the same exact thing as your tar.gz just done in the format those distros want.
Re: Anthropic, please ship an official Claude Desktop for Linux
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh please. The super key is the windows key. You come across as someone who has never used a computer before.
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So you really couldn't figure out what "Super key" meant, even with context? I feel like you are being hyperbolic. This isn't magical hidden Linux knowledge. Honestly, if not being able to find what applications you have running, and not even trying pressing the large button on your keyboard with the windows logo on it was so traumatizing, you might want to just avoid Linux entirely.
Re: Anthropic, please ship an official Claude Desktop for Linux
#229Hey! 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.
Wouldn't Flatpak be a solution to many of those problems? Develop the app against one Window Manager / Desktop environment and have them as requirements of the Flatpak?
Re: Anthropic, please ship an official Claude Desktop for Linux
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
Such as? The only proprietary software I have running on my machine is electron apps, which are essentially bloated VMs. As we’ve seen from this thread, this is still apparently too great of an engineering feat for anthropic to tackle. I don’t think I’m unique in this regard.
Tons and yeah of course some are also Electron apps but not all... Proprietary apps I can think of include Chrome, Teams until a few years ago (I think they just gave up), Steam, the JetBrains IDE's, Cursor, Discord, Matlab, ... Of course a lot of Linux users these days just live their lives through browsers. That's pretty sad.
Chrome: Is electron without electron
Teams: Was electron
Steam: Valve is deeply invested in Linux, this isn't them just shipping an app. Different category.
Jetbrains: Java
Cursor: Electron
Discord: Electron
Matlab: Java
ABI compatibility doesn't matter for any of your examples.