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] 94 points 1 year ago (8 children)

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

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

UwUntu needs some competition

[–] Murdoc 10 points 1 year 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] 24 points 1 year ago

ETA iso, wen?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Reminds me of this

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Where is it? Give it to me now

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

You can make pony flavored Debian based distro named Derpian

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Bruh this is needed

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 81 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Just please no more electron.

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

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

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

You're only half sarcastic, I can tell!

And they did apparently. It's called Tauri

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

Are there other leptons I can create apps with?

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[–] [email protected] 67 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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

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

[–] Murdoc 35 points 1 year ago

Make a Linux app, not war.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago

Yeah, this is obnoxious.

It's also truly terrible at being persuasive.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year 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 1 year 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 1 year 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 1 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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year 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 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 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 1 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.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 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.

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

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

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year 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 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year 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 1 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] 6 points 1 year ago

I'm sorry but no AUR mention?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 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.

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