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GitHub Desktop is now available

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Re: GitHub Desktop is now available

#241

Post by gress »

brianmurphy wrote: post #229
gress wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Necessary but not sufficient. There would be no free GitHub repos for open source without the income from the closed source repos that pay for them. As usual, open source is subsidized by closed source.

Maybe not "github" repos, but other public git repos would pop up. Suggesting that open source wouldn't have distribution is ignorant of the origins of open source.

This is a straw man. I nowhere suggest that open source would not have distribution.

GitHub isn't just 'distribution' it has required a huge amount of investment and focus by individuals who need to make money to feed their families and prosper.

The fact that it is GitHub that we're talking about, and the fictional repos that you imagine would spring up proves the point - in the real world, open source is subsidized by closed source.

Re: GitHub Desktop is now available

#242

Post by yellowapple »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #225
yellowapple wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's really just a wrapper around the git command, then I suppose I'm not really interested anyway, then, seeing as the existing Git GUIs for Linux provide that rather well. I was assuming it was like the Mac client where it provides Github-specific functionality (adding "Clone in Desktop" buttons to repo pages, managing pull requests, etc.).

I was assuming it was like the Mac client where it provides Github-specific functionality (adding "Clone in Desktop" buttons to repo pages, managing pull requests, etc.). It is like the Mac client, but that functionality still doesn’t justify the resource usage than a Chromium wrapper would bring.

Right; my point with that was more around the implication that it's just a git wrapper.

Regardless, my ultimate point is that Github went through all this trouble to make this Electron Shell thing and they don't even bother using their own tool. That seems surprising, Electron's merits and troubles aside.

Re: GitHub Desktop is now available

#243

Post by zachlatta »

agumonkey wrote: post #167
zachlatta wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Magit is AWESOME. It's easily saved me an hour each day (when using git heavily).

Which parts do you enjoy the most ?

It's super easy to create a new branch and push it upstream (especially when creating PRs).

I know I could write a script to do that for me, but there's something so nice about having little things like that already baked in.

Re: GitHub Desktop is now available

#244

Post by shurcooL »

shurcooL wrote: post #231

The new layout looks great! But there's an immediately obvious bug, the middle pane keeps resizing to become wider every time you switch between repos. Also, one large repo I had simply shows 0 commits. It worked just fine before. And another even larger repo works fine.

An update, I tried to remove the problematic git repo and re-added it, and now history shows up okay.

Re: GitHub Desktop is now available

#245

Post by em3rgent0rdr »

rimantas wrote: post #233
em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It demonstrates a lack of concern/acknowledgement of the diversity of its user base. Especially if they are going to be promoting this on the front page of their website and in my dashboard upon login, which presents me with the broadcast: "GitHub Desktop is now available The new GitHub Desktop is now available" And then I click on it to install it, I feel marginalized and hence a little insulted, when discovering I…

Or maybe, just maybe, they are very aware of their user base and that's the reason there is no version for Linux? Should I get upset that they don't have Lithuanian version of the app, and hence demonstrate a lack of concern/acknowledgement of the diversity of its user base?

That's not a comparable anaolgy. I can't find data on the number of linux users vs the number of lithuanian users, but the number of linux users is orders of magnitude higher.

Re: GitHub Desktop is now available

#246

Post by SZJX »

Fiskie wrote: post #48
xirdstl wrote: post #18

I use Atlassian Sourcetree as a git GUI on Windows. Does GitHub Desktop do anything different / better?

The client itself is very streamlined. Push/Pull operations are swept into a single Sync operation. Merging is as easy as selecting a branch from a dropdown and clicking a button. Things like that. On the downside, utilities like tagging, blame and stash do not seem to exist. The account linking system from the old GitHub client hasn't changed and you can't clone from anywhere that isn't GitHub. Revision history is a…

It makes so little sense to make push/pull into one thing. It's likely to do much more harm than good.

Re: GitHub Desktop is now available

#247

Post by yhager »

chimeracoder wrote: post #205
zxcvcxz wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a myth that Linux users aren't interested in GUI tools. According to stack overflow statistics, Ubuntu is the most popular Linux based OS amongst developers, which is an OS that is much more GUI based than say Arch linux. According to the same stats, Linux and OS X usage is statistically tied at ~21%. If you take into account the fact that only about 2% of computer users run Linux at all it's pretty clea…

Let me preface this by saying that I am a full-time Linux user and have been for several years. I run Debian on my laptop and Arch Linux on my home machine. Both use i3 (no DE), and I do all my work at the command line or in applications that I launch from the command line[0]. I love the Linux terminal. I don't even own a non-Linux machine, not counting the various OS X devices I've used at work when one is required.…

> I am a full-time Linux user and have been for several years. I run Debian on my laptop and Arch Linux on my home machine. Both use i3 (no DE), and I do all my work at the command line or in applications that I launch from the command line[0]. I love the Linux terminal. I don't even own a non-Linux machine, not counting the various OS X devices I've used at work when one is required.

Wow, that's exactly my case as well :). I could've written this, almost word for word (except I run debian on my servers, and archlinux on my laptop/home machines).

Re: GitHub Desktop is now available

#248

Post by cben »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #89
StavrosK wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the UI written in now? Doesn't Qt work for all three platforms?

It's using Cocoa on OS X and WPF on Windows, in other words the UI toolkits that are native to their respective platforms. Qt indeed works everywhere, but by using it you make the tradeoff that your app doesn't really feel native anywhere (except maybe on Linux with KDE). In short, using Qt would mean making concessions on UI quality.

I find it hard to look at their windows UI and think "native".

I'm wrong, as it was explicitly designed in windows 8's "Metro" style in mind [https://github.com/blog/1151-designing-github-for-windows]. Nevertheless, the concept of a "native" windows style is currently such a mixed mess that I can't bring myself to think of this app as "native". I don't see why being native to Metro is desirable enough to give up the convenience of having a single cross-platform app.

[I'm not saying I don't like the design, I do. It's just that I care about its features — simplicity and github integration — as something I can recommend to git newbies — much more that "nativeness".]

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