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A new wave of Linux applications

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Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#141

Post by bogwog »

dleslie wrote: post #15
bogwog wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, the Pinephone store very clearly states that this is a beta device intended for experience linux developers/early adopters only. It’s not meant to be a daily driver yet.

It's not Beta. At the time I purchased it, it wasn't even Alpha. Beta, as a game developer, implies to me that there's a few outstanding show-stoppers but on the whole the product is safe to show to eager end-consumers who are willing to tolerate some rough edges. The PinePhone isn't even that, yet; I couldn't conscientiously hand it to a non-techy and ask them for feedback because I'm not even sure it would reliably…

The Pinephone isn’t a video game.

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#142

Post by fsflover »

quanticle wrote: post #113
shams93 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why we still need html/css for interfaces, so the PWA with wasm still seems to be the best way to distribute an app that works anywhere, or PWA for mobile and electron for desktop with wasm enabling very high performance client features.

I disagree with the whole premise of having a single app for both desktop and mobile. Even if you give developers the tools to make a good app for desktop and mobile, they won't. They'll make the mobile app first, ensure that it runs on desktop, and then dust off their hands and call it a day. To quote the Purism blogpost cited elsewhere in this thread: Web designers now have toolboxes to design web pages, which they…

But it already generally works on the web. Why wouldn't it work on Linux given good tools (https://blogs.gnome.org/alexm/2021/12/31/libadwaita-1-0)?

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#143

Post by habosa »

drekipus wrote: post #139
habosa wrote: post #127

These apps look very nice, I am happy to see this movement. But this is HN so ... allow me to go a bit off topic and complain. Why is is so freaking hard to install an app on Linux (Ubuntu)? There's nothing in the software center, and when I find an app I want I am just pointed to a .tar.gz or something. I want a file I can double-click and end up with a launchable icon representing that app in my dock later. I would…

what's wrong with the ol' "sudo apt install foo" outdated packages are the problem of the distro, not of the tool. the whole reason I went from windows -> linux was because I could just type in what I want, rather than having to go looking around for dumb things on sites that no longer exist.

That installs a binary tool I can run at the command line. Which is great for a lot of things. It's not great for a web browser or a calculator.

I want an app. I want it to have an icon I can click on and a button to close it. I don't want logs in my terminal or zombie processes and I don't want to have to remember the name/path of a binary.

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#144

Post by habosa »

atrus wrote: post #137
habosa wrote: post #127

These apps look very nice, I am happy to see this movement. But this is HN so ... allow me to go a bit off topic and complain. Why is is so freaking hard to install an app on Linux (Ubuntu)? There's nothing in the software center, and when I find an app I want I am just pointed to a .tar.gz or something. I want a file I can double-click and end up with a launchable icon representing that app in my dock later. I would…

What apps are you having to do this with? I've yet to have an app that I couldn't either get through apt or as an AppImage which definitely has that experience of double click and go when you have AppImageLauncher installed.

AppImage does seem promising although I tried it the other day for Electrum (bitcoin wallet) and it was a mess. I was not able to double-click to launch and once I closed the app I was never able to launch it again. Maybe I'll give it another try?

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#145

Post by unknown2374 »

habosa wrote: post #143
drekipus wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what's wrong with the ol' "sudo apt install foo" outdated packages are the problem of the distro, not of the tool. the whole reason I went from windows -> linux was because I could just type in what I want, rather than having to go looking around for dumb things on sites that no longer exist.

That installs a binary tool I can run at the command line. Which is great for a lot of things. It's not great for a web browser or a calculator. I want an app. I want it to have an icon I can click on and a button to close it. I don't want logs in my terminal or zombie processes and I don't want to have to remember the name/path of a binary.

sudo apt-get install firefox ?

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#146

Post by [deleted] »

habosa wrote: post #127

These apps look very nice, I am happy to see this movement. But this is HN so ... allow me to go a bit off topic and complain. Why is is so freaking hard to install an app on Linux (Ubuntu)? There's nothing in the software center, and when I find an app I want I am just pointed to a .tar.gz or something. I want a file I can double-click and end up with a launchable icon representing that app in my dock later. I would…

[deleted]

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#147

Post by hprotagonist »

habosa wrote: post #143
drekipus wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what's wrong with the ol' "sudo apt install foo" outdated packages are the problem of the distro, not of the tool. the whole reason I went from windows -> linux was because I could just type in what I want, rather than having to go looking around for dumb things on sites that no longer exist.

That installs a binary tool I can run at the command line. Which is great for a lot of things. It's not great for a web browser or a calculator. I want an app. I want it to have an icon I can click on and a button to close it. I don't want logs in my terminal or zombie processes and I don't want to have to remember the name/path of a binary.

  sudo apt install firefox
works just fine.

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#148

Post by nyanpasu64 »

stickfigure wrote: post #81
kitsunesoba wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “don’t theme my app” thing just tells me that GNOME/GTK+/Adwaita aren’t built in a way that gracefully handles theming, or that devs building apps with them are doing things like hard coding colors when they should be using dynamic system colors such as those provided by UIColor[0] in UIKit. [0]: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uicolor/ui_e...

Supporting themes imposes an ongoing technical burden across the whole ecosystem. It's not worth it. You don't hear people say "I hate macs because I can't make my title bars purple".

I want customizable color schemes and fonts and sizes. It's nice as a user to pick full-on custom themes. Sadly even though Qt is based around theming, I had to turn off theming for semi-customized controls (colored sliders) to make them render correctly on Windows and Linux Breeze/Fusion. And it's more work to verify my app looks good across OSes when QButtonBar and QFormLayout change appearance on different OSes. So finding a good solution is nontrivial.

Re: A new wave of Linux applications

#149

Post by dj_mc_merlin »

habosa wrote: post #143
drekipus wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what's wrong with the ol' "sudo apt install foo" outdated packages are the problem of the distro, not of the tool. the whole reason I went from windows -> linux was because I could just type in what I want, rather than having to go looking around for dumb things on sites that no longer exist.

That installs a binary tool I can run at the command line. Which is great for a lot of things. It's not great for a web browser or a calculator. I want an app. I want it to have an icon I can click on and a button to close it. I don't want logs in my terminal or zombie processes and I don't want to have to remember the name/path of a binary.

> That installs a binary tool I can run at the command line

No, that install an application in general. You choose to run it from the command line. If you want to just turn your terminal into the application, `exec firefox`. Most window managers provide a way to run an application standalone via some shortcut. On i3 it is Win+D for example.

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