this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2023
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Linux

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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Make a Linux app. Stop making distributions.

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[–] [email protected] 95 points 11 months ago (8 children)

WDYM so I shouldn’t make an anime flavored, Arch based distro named Archuwu?

[–] [email protected] 28 points 11 months ago (1 children)

UwUntu needs some competition

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I can totally picture this. Cutesy sound effects, characters pulling up/down menus, sparkle effects...
Where can I get it?

[–] [email protected] 25 points 11 months ago

ETA iso, wen?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago

Reminds me of this

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago

Where is it? Give it to me now

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

You can make pony flavored Debian based distro named Derpian

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Bruh this is needed

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

You should, and you shouldn't let anyone stop you!

[–] [email protected] 84 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Why make new apps, we should be focusing on rewriting everything in Rust /s

[–] [email protected] 51 points 11 months ago (7 children)

Just please no more electron.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Can”t we just re-write Electron in Rust and then use it for everything else? /s

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

You're only half sarcastic, I can tell!

And they did apparently. It's called Tauri

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Are there other leptons I can create apps with?

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[–] [email protected] 72 points 11 months ago (2 children)

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

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

[–] [email protected] 33 points 11 months ago

Make a Linux app, not war.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 11 months ago

Yeah, this is obnoxious.

It's also truly terrible at being persuasive.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 11 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 20 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Electron can be done well, like vscode does. In saying that, it almost never seems to happen

[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Electron was made for Atom and I think, though I'm not 100% that code is based on Atom

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

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] 5 points 11 months 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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months 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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 30 points 11 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

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] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months 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.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months 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.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 11 months ago (1 children)

dont listen to the noise, make a distro

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 11 months ago (1 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

"Yes, exactly like this 🦆 command I didn't know of before."

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months 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] 6 points 11 months ago

I'm sorry but no AUR mention?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months 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] 3 points 11 months ago

Maybe we need a new distro that comes with vscode installed so we don’t have to do it!

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