Make a Linux app. Stop making distributions.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    651 year ago

    Make a Linux app, make a Linux distro, who cares…

    How about you just let people do what they enjoy doing.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    301 year ago

    The “Where to start” section should be a “Not You” meme, with Electron in the middle square

      • @SuperIce
        link
        English
        111 year ago

        I’m curious what witchcraft Microsoft did with VSCode to make it so responsive and performant when no other electron app is.

          • JackbyDev
            link
            fedilink
            English
            71 year ago

            The term to look up is Monaco. That’s the secret sauce part of VS Code that made it faster but I don’t know enough about it to describe it well

            • @[email protected]
              link
              fedilink
              51 year ago

              Just looked it up a bit: https://microsoft.github.io/monaco-editor/

              AFAIU, monaco is just about the editor part. So if an electron application doesn’t need an editor, this won’t really help to improve performance.

              Having gone through learning and developing with electron myself, this (and the referenced links) was a very helpful resource: https://www.electronjs.org/docs/latest/tutorial/performance

              In essence: “measure, measure, measure”.

              Then optimize what actually needs optimizing. There’s no easy, generic answer on how to get a given electron app to “appear performant”. I say “appear”, because even vscode leverages various strategies to appear more performant than it might actually be in certain scenarios. I’m not saying this to bash vscode, but because techniques like “lazy loading” are simply a tool in the toolbox called “performance tuning”.

              BTW: Not even using C++ will guarantee a performant application in the end, if the application topic itself is complex enough (e.g. video editors, DAWs, etc.) and one doesn’t pay attention to performance during development.

              All it takes is to let a bunch of somewhat CPU intensive procedures pile up in an application and at some point it will feel sluggish in certain scenarios. Only way out of that is to measure where the actual bottlenecks are and then think about how one could get away with doing less (or doing less while a bunch of other things are going on and then do it when there’s more of an “idle” time), then make resp. changes to the codebase.

          • @SuperIce
            link
            English
            61 year ago

            Atom was a lot less responsive and generally laggier than VSCode though. I used to use Atom and was surprised how much more responsive VSCode was.

      • @misophist
        link
        31 year ago

        Didn’t they basically take all the slow bits and rewrite them in not electron?

  • @mvirts
    link
    291 year ago

    Is this site insane? On Linux I have access to so many more applications than other platforms. Sorry apple, ios apps repeating the same thing infinitely doesn’t count.

    • Gyoza Power
      link
      fedilink
      7
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      You are comparing Apples to oranges. While it may be true that Linux may have more software available, in my experience macOS has a shit ton of productivity software as well, and many times, due to being for-profit, of higher quality. That’s exactly why I’ve been thinking about giving my own try to making a launcher like Raycast for Linux.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        21 year ago

        Can completely agree. On Apple systems I can find a ton of productivity and editing software, but no luck doing things like file operations or automating. On Linux I can find absolutely anything related to processing data, customization, science or protocol clients, but no luck finding good note taking tool.

      • @mvirts
        link
        21 year ago

        I think I live in a foss bubble, haven’t paid for software for… Too long 😹. Would you make it foss or paid or something else?

        • Gyoza Power
          link
          fedilink
          2
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          If I were to end up doing it (too many things I would like to do, too little time), I’d do it foss. At most I’d paywall features that have an ongoing cost (like hosting or server costs), though I am a bigger fan of keeping things local. That way its simpler and also easier to trust.

          Personally, I think that paying for software isn’t a bad thing as long as the price is right and the licensing reasonable (I really hate unnecessary subscriptions). Devs (specially if working on complex stuff) got to eat too, and sometimes donations aren’t enough.

    • KNova
      link
      fedilink
      English
      51 year ago

      Yeah I recently went back to Linux as a daily driver and was blown away how easy stuff like flatpaks made it to do everything I need quickly. That wasn’t the case last time I used Linux for something more than a quick and dirty VM host.

  • @uis
    link
    231 year ago

    Electron? Really? At this point you should pick web app.

    • Josh
      link
      fedilink
      01 year ago

      An app is an app, and my computer will take it all the same. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

  • @GustavoM
    link
    English
    111 year ago

    It’s fun and games… until you get lots of “…just like X command?” commentaries from randoms. Until you get sick of such and decide to do something non-productive instead. Unless there is money included in the former.

    t. Been there, done that.

  • @aluminium
    link
    91 year ago

    Its not like there many Windows “Apps” being made. Almost everything these days is web based on the desktop.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      11 year ago

      No wonder when installing anything on Windows have so much friction compared to Linux and MacOS. Every program have it’s own installer and updater, bundling dependencies with no deduplication making simpliest program heavy. Like, when writing a Python program you are supposed to bundle Python or user would need to install it manually.

      GNOME created awesome app ecosystem recently. I have hundreds of them installed, no slowdowns or problems with space, all updated in single menu with quick search which one I want. Apps on desktops have even more sense than on mobile, as they can benefit from less isolation and more integration with rich filesystem and system functions.

  • Raccoonn
    link
    fedilink
    71 year ago

    How about instead of making yet another Linux distro, you just make an install script instead? I’m personally more likely to try out an install script over a totally pointless ISO…

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    31 year ago

    I’m interested in new distributions, but it really needs to do something new. Different default packages with a handful of custom things on top of an existing distro just doesn’t cut it. Give me a NixOS, Puppy Linux, ReactOS(I know it’s not a distro) or something else unique. I’m tired of Debian/Ubuntu based distros, if I wanted Debian or Ubuntu, I would use them.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    11 year ago

    I’d been playing with the idea of building a Linux app. I used Post Haste on Windows to help me organise footage but haven’t found a substitute on Linux yet.