Consolidating the Linux Desktop App Story: An Idea • Hacker News Board

Re: Consolidating the Linux Desktop App Story: An Idea

#61

Post by digi_owl » Fri, Jul 14, 2017, 1:59 PM UTC

nisa wrote: post #30

Unpopular opinion: Ditch everything GNOME, glib, vala, GTK and focus on making KDE, Qt, QML first class software. QML is powerful and is quite fast and can at least be made fast. KDE needs UI and design polish but the foundations are IMHO more sane than GNOME ever was. Move the good stuff from GNOME over to KDE. E.g. kio-slaves and gvfs should be one stable solid pluggable piece of software. And document that well -…

Would agree to an degree, but KDE is adopting more and more Gnome-isms at the plumbing level as they do not have the deep pocket backing that Gnome has via Red Hat.

Re: Consolidating the Linux Desktop App Story: An Idea

#62

Post by digi_owl » Fri, Jul 14, 2017, 2:06 PM UTC

iBelieve wrote: post #42

evv wrote: post #39

Sorry, but I believe this effort is doomed to fail if you don’t provide compatibility with the open web. It is the only online app distribution environment that has really thrived, other than Apple’s and Google’s. Of course you could do this easily with electron apps. Too much bloat? Fine- go with a ReactNative/NativeScript approach with a JS VM controlling native UI. Hate JS? Fine- compile to it from your language o…

The big problem with web apps as first-class citizens is UI inconsistency. What I love about native desktop apps is that they should all follow well-defined user interface guidelines and all use the same toolkit/theme. With web apps, you don't get that - every web app uses its own fonts, its own styles, its own UI structure and navigation.

Meh, the real problem is bloat (in memory and CPU cycles) and integration with the larger ecosystem.

the web has been developed to exist inside a browser, not on the desktop.

Re: Consolidating the Linux Desktop App Story: An Idea

#63

Post by digi_owl » Fri, Jul 14, 2017, 2:23 PM UTC

The real elephant in the room is not a single platform, we already have that (Linux+Gnu+X11).

What is missing is STABILITY. The kind of stability we see over at Windows where win32 binaries from the 9x era can run on Windows 10.

The kind of stability one have achieved with the bedrock of Linux (and that Torvalds gets ragged on for defending), but that the DE devs piss on every time they make a new weekend project.

App stores are a distraction, single platform (more like distro monoculture, it seems to me) is a distraction, And Gnome+Wayland is the last people you want to entrust with anything related to stability (you can get Qt working on things that get GTK screaming about missing dependencies).

Re: Consolidating the Linux Desktop App Story: An Idea

#64

Post by bryanlarsen » Fri, Jul 14, 2017, 2:48 PM UTC

revelation wrote: post #60

bryanlarsen wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He advocates flatpak, which is basically desktop Docker. You package all your dependencies so you can choose any of the 15 to put inside your flatpak, and it'll work with any of the 15 outside your flatpak. You get the normal trade-offs for this approach -- large downloads, disk space, slow security updates, UI inconsistencies but XKCD 927 doesn't really apply.

Does everyone nowadays only write software that is some messy desktop rendition of a website? The kind of software I write doesn't exist in a vacuum where all it needs is to run AMD64 code, Linux syscalls and a canvas to draw on. It needs to interact with the system, figure out what drives you have inserted, play nice with keychains and whatever.. You can't flatpak that.

Why not? flatpak has access to devices.

Re: Consolidating the Linux Desktop App Story: An Idea

#65

Post by wmf » Fri, Jul 14, 2017, 6:35 PM UTC

bjpbakker wrote: post #56

mhall119 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because Linux desktop users want to be able to use consumer software, and the only way they're going to get it is if Linux becomes a consumer operating system

Linux desktop has mostly been about using free software IMO. If you don't care about your freedom, why not run macOS? Most vendors of non-free software do support macOS (or viable alternatives are available). I strongly doubt many of them will even come to Linux. Because it requires more standard configurations. Apple had to make its main FS case insensitive before vendors like MS and Adobe were porting their softwar…

A small nit here: the Mac has been case insensitive since 1984 and AFAIK Adobe actually started on Mac.

But yeah, the main justification for an open-source power-user desktop OS is a backup plan in case macOS dies, which isn't a very good business case.