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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

#321

Post by bigyabai »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #241
WD-42 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, I didn't realize that the "Super key" was the Windows key, and no, I didn't think to try it. I never use the Windows key myself, because it's never needed. I'm either in a DOS or PS box, or if I'm working at the desktop, the taskbar gives me all the affordances I need including a 'Type here to search' box. Key point is that I don't want to press any keys to maintain my awareness of what's running on the machine.…

> Processes with windows associated with them should always be apparent

KDE and GNOME both solve this with a dock, the same way that Windows and macOS solve it.

> It's amusing to see that they've been embraced (if not extended) by the haters.

The haters by-and-large don't use it. Those haters use esoteric tiling WMs that don't bind anything to super by default.

The KDE and GNOME developers have a direct usability goal. With respect to Slashdot's opinions, the Linux desktop would still be stuck in the 90s if we listened to them. Your perspective as a DOS/PowerShell user is not any more valuable, considering you barely use Windows as-is.

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

#322

Post by 9dev »

kurtis_reed wrote: post #314
9dev wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t really care about the OS. I want a beefy laptop with a good keyboard and trackpad, long battery life, and a crisp screen. Preferably very silent, bonus points for a clean design. That’s the value proposition of a MacBook.

There are many laptops with similar specs that you can run Linux on, and for less money

Not really. The only thing that comes close IMHO are the top shelf Lenovo X1 Carbon, but even those come with several caveats compared to MacBooks, and the M4/M5 chips are ridiculously powerful.

I’m open for suggestions though

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

#323

Post by bigyabai »

musictubes wrote: post #273
WD-42 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As someone whose last interaction with Windows was 98 and have been on Mac ever since I also had no idea what a super key was. Also Googled “Windows key” and realized I had seen it before in pictures but never thought about it. I used some sort of *nix on a VAX terminal in college and ran SUSE on my machine once I realized I hated Windows 98 but all of that is ancient history at this point lol. All of that is to say…

It helps that the Super key's glyph is identical to the greyscale four-pane window icon that Microsoft uses: https://www.gnome.org/

Most people that look down at their keyboard will be able to visually identify that icon out of the bunch, methinks.

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

#324

Post by amlib »

aaddrick wrote: post #284
winter_blue wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't just a single Flatpak release be sufficient? Flatpak can be set up on many/most distros.

Flatpack packages everything under one distributable, but doesn't solve the quirkiness of all the different frontends, backend, compositors, etc. - titlebar - tray icon w/light and dark mode support - global keyboard shortcut - redraw events after resizing Those are a subset of the many items that don't play well between various distros. Like Ubuntu Gnome w/X11 vs Pop!OS COSMIC w/Wayland or any of the tiling window m…

> titlebar

Consistency of titlebars has been dead in every OS for decades now. This is not even a flatpak problem anyway, but I do think wayland/gnome ought to have some kind of fallback decoration. This wouldn't even be meant to solve this problem, but would be a nice gesture for situations where a dev really don't care about how the decoration functions or looks, like when opening a game window or movie player like mpv or even just having a friction-less experience when creating your first window in a new app.

> tray icon w/light and dark mode support

Flatpak and specially gnome are championing the background app portals. I have reservations on how it's not a full replacement for tray icons, but Desktop Environments are free to implement it like a tray icon.

> global keyboard shortcut

AFAIK it's a solved problem, but there is an adoption lag for DE's and apps.

> redraw events after resizing

Not sure what you mean by that? Apps resize fine in flatpak

Every problem in flatpak can be addressed. It sucks they weren't addressed sooner but I suggest you look into the efforts being made for flatpak-next. Even right now it's the closest thing we got to a unified gui experience in linux.

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

#325

Post by CamperBob2 »

bigyabai wrote: post #321
CamperBob2 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I didn't realize that the "Super key" was the Windows key, and no, I didn't think to try it. I never use the Windows key myself, because it's never needed. I'm either in a DOS or PS box, or if I'm working at the desktop, the taskbar gives me all the affordances I need including a 'Type here to search' box. Key point is that I don't want to press any keys to maintain my awareness of what's running on the machine.…

> Processes with windows associated with them should always be apparent KDE and GNOME both solve this with a dock, the same way that Windows and macOS solve it. > It's amusing to see that they've been embraced (if not extended) by the haters. The haters by-and-large don't use it. Those haters use esoteric tiling WMs that don't bind anything to super by default. The KDE and GNOME developers have a direct usability goa…

KDE and GNOME both solve this with a dock, the same way that Windows and macOS solve it.

Not by default, GNOME doesn't. Try installing Ubuntu. You get nothing but a blank desktop by default. The bar at left only shows shortcuts for launching tasks, not running tasks themselves.

Your perspective as a DOS/PowerShell user is not any more valuable, considering you barely use Windows as-is.

Those advocating an OS with 5% market share might do well to listen to other perspectives once in a while.

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

#326

Post by JCattheATM »

amlib wrote: post #178
hparadiz wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tray icon dock/panel in KDE is fully removable. You can just delete it. So the opposite of that is also a thing. No one is forcing you to always have a visual presence of a program. Even Windows let's you hide tray icons forever if you want.

But then you run into the problem of apps assuming the tray icon exists or is visible, but isn't, leading to problems such as the program just disappearing when you close it's window with no way to reopen it (some do reopen when you try re-executing it, others do nothing or just spawn a whole new instance...) or even having no access to some function that is exclusive to the tray icon menu. All these issues can happe…

> But then you run into the problem of apps assuming the tray icon exists or is visible, but isn't, leading to problems such as the program just disappearing when you close it's window with no way to reopen it (some do reopen when you try re-executing it, others do nothing or just spawn a whole new instance...) or even having no access to some function that is exclusive to the tray icon menu.

Can you name some that act like this? In 30 years I don't think I've ever seen that behavior...

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

#327

Post by nullpoint420 »

9dev wrote: post #322
kurtis_reed wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many laptops with similar specs that you can run Linux on, and for less money

Not really. The only thing that comes close IMHO are the top shelf Lenovo X1 Carbon, but even those come with several caveats compared to MacBooks, and the M4/M5 chips are ridiculously powerful. I’m open for suggestions though

HP G1A Ultra?

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

#328

Post by nullpoint420 »

kurtis_reed wrote: post #315
nullpoint420 wrote: post #146

I'm still surprised at how many developers still turn their noses up at using Linux. Like... You already use Docker and deploy to K8S... On Linux...

People buy Apple products for the same reason people buy BMWs

To drive fast?

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

#329

Post by rstuart4133 »

NotPractical wrote: post #313
rstuart4133 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can confirm. At a past company we worked hard to release a Linux desktop client for our customers who wanted it ... you’re getting peppered with complaints from people using distributions you’ve never heard of ... but the problem is in upstream somewhere You have taken on the work the distributions do in the open source world. No upstream open source developer takes that on. Instead of getting bug reports from user…

> No upstream open source developer takes that on The key words here are "open source", right? Some problems can't be solved without cooperation with the developer.

> Some problems can't be solved without cooperation with the developer.

Those problems are the ones package maintainer forwards upstream.

It's well understood common and common workflow because lots of closed source packages are distributed by distro's now. Debian distributes firmware; Ubuntu and RedHat distribute closed source drivers.

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

#330

Post by MaxHodler »

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.

Thanks for this. What are the downsides of using your build vs a hypothetical one from Anthropic?
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