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It's likely they felt it's not worth the time since most Linux users are using the CLI for everything else, and likely wouldn't be interested in a GUI. Personal

It's likely they felt it's not worth the time since most Linux users are using the CLI for everything else, and likely wouldn't be interested in a GUI. Personally I've never used the Github GUI and have no plans to, running the commands is fast and easy.

zxcvcxz 11y ago
I think it's a myth that Linux users aren't interested in GUI tools. According to stack overflow statistics, Ubuntu is the most popular Linux based OS amongst developers, which is an OS that is much more GUI based than say Arch linux. According to the same stats, Linux and OS X usage is statistically tied at ~21%. If you take into account the fact that only about 2% of computer users run Linux at all it's pretty clear that programmers disproportionately prefer Linux (and to a lesser extent OS X) to other systems. I personally have already moved away from github, but I still wish they would build some tools that work on Linux.
- etwigg 11y ago
  Shameless plug: I recently built a new linux GUI git client. The people who use it really like it. Still working on docs to better explain what makes it different. Like GitHub's client, it's more than just a wrapper around the CLI, but unlike GitHub's client it exposes git's full power (tags, cherry-pick, rebase, etc.) If you'd like to try a new linux gui client, give it a spin! Video in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4UQpGk1Ry8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4UQpGk1Ry8 Free download Win/Mac/Linux: https://secure.diffplug.com/versions/1.6.1 https://secure.diffplug.com/versions/1.6.1
  - Nux 11y ago
    You should publish some screenshots of it.
    - etwigg 11y ago
      100% agree! Was hoping to have the full manual done today, but it's not ready yet. Kinda worked out - I'll spend today ducking as the GitHub goliath whooshes over me for HN readership's attention ;-). The rest of the product's docs are complete and full of screenshots: https://docs.diffplug.com/1.6.1/ViewerDiffers/TextViewerDiffer/ https://docs.diffplug.com/1.6.1/ViewerDiffers/TextViewerDiff... so the git client will be too. This client animates changes to the DAG, so I'm experimenting with animated gifs so that the manual can capture the feel of using it.
  - zamalek 11y ago
    Your diffing doesn't suck! That alone is really valuable. What really sucks on Windows is merging: there are very few products that deal with merging at a basic competency level (the git merge markers usually wreak havoc). One criticism: that jgit tab needs a serious UX pass. It's extremely scary looking to someone who has never used it (me). That being said, I'll be keeping a very close eye on your kickstarter. Very close.
    - etwigg 11y ago
      Thanks for the feedback! On the spectrum from "iOS" to "airplane cockpit", I think GitHub is trying to be iPhone, but I think git has enough inherent power (like an aircraft) that you leave a lot of functionality on the table if you constrain yourself to a "no training required" interface. It's certainly something to aspire to, though! If there's anyone out there who thinks they can clean this up, I'm always looking for partners :) Based in SF, open to remote collaboration, contact info in my profile. The differ / merge resolution story is gonna get a whole lot better real soon.
- JeremyMorgan 11y ago
  I wouldn't try to speak for everyone who uses Linux of course, it's just been my observation. With my "roots" in computing being in the command line driven 80s, I still feel way better using command line stuff and likely will never change. It doesn't mean I am opposed to GUIs in general, there are certainly things I would never consider doing from a command line, but git isn't one of them.
- chimeracoder 11y ago
  Let me preface this by saying that I am a full-time Linux user and have been for several years. I run Debian on my laptop and Arch Linux on my home machine. Both use i3 (no DE), and I do all my work at the command line or in applications that I launch from the command line[0]. I love the Linux terminal. I don't even own a non-Linux machine, not counting the various OS X devices I've used at work when one is required. > I think it's a myth that Linux users aren't interested in GUI tools. It's definitely a myth, and a very dangerous and self-fulfilling one. I would strongly appreciate a GUI option for many common command-line tools. I like the command-line, and do most of my work there. But sometimes GUI tools are nice to have. The problem is that most GUI tools on Linux really suck, and most Linux tools don't even have a GUI at all[1]. Contrary to popular belief, it's not due to the inadequacy of GUI toolkits on Linux, but simply due to a lack of time actually spent developing these tools. This ends up being self-fulfilling, because it raises the barrier to getting started on Linux, which keeps out people who would be otherwise very comfortable on Linux as an OS, but simply dislike being forced to use the command-line exclusively. [0] Never bothered with dmenu, never really felt the need to set it up. [1] I'm not counting ncurses-based interfaces as GUIs for these purposes.
  - ryanlol 11y ago
    I for one feel very uncomfortable using other OSes due to the lack of text UIs. And it seems pretty likely that a vast majority of linux devs feel similarly, considering how few softwares start out with just a GUI instead of the other way around.
  - yhager 11y ago
    > I am a full-time Linux user and have been for several years. I run Debian on my laptop and Arch Linux on my home machine. Both use i3 (no DE), and I do all my work at the command line or in applications that I launch from the command line[0]. I love the Linux terminal. I don't even own a non-Linux machine, not counting the various OS X devices I've used at work when one is required. Wow, that's exactly my case as well :). I could've written this, almost word for word (except I run debian on my servers, and archlinux on my laptop/home machines).
- craigds 11y ago
  I don't think it's a myth, but it definitely is self-fulfilling (since it puts off users who would otherwise use Linux, but don't because they don't want to exclusively use the CLI) Personally I use a mac nowadays but still use and prefer the command line for this kind of thing. I tried using Github for Mac but quickly gave up the first time I had to do something vaguely complicated. I guess I'm still a linux person at heart - you can tell if you prefer to 'brew install everything and have never actually used the App Store except to install Xcode :)
  - girvo 11y ago
    My discovery of `brew cask`[0] has meant that the App Store is avoided at nearly all cost. I'm a Linux user at heart, too -- one of the only reasons I use OS X is that it feels like "Unix, but with nice powerful GUI apps as well"! [0] http://caskroom.io/ http://caskroom.io/
vinay427 11y ago
The problem with this attitude is that it makes it far more difficult for Linux distros to gain more varied users. Specifically those who are new to development, or (not really relevant in this case) not developers at all. Instead of pointing to a CLI for everything, which I personally love and support for what it is, it might be worth encouraging companies to develop more cross-platform software that allows for a choice of operating system without many sacrifices.
- JeremyMorgan 11y ago
  I agree 100%. More GUI tools will most certainly attract more people to Linux and something that shouldn't be overlooked. For the record I was just guessing the reasoning GitHub overlooked it, there could be other reasons I'm unaware of.
barnacs 11y ago
But it's not about git itself. Issues, PR comments, the wiki and such things make github what is. Personally, I'd prefer a nice graphical desktop app to handle these, and either have a terminal embedded or run it alongside the gui to handle the git commands.
em3rgent0rdr 11y ago
It's rather embarrassing that github would consider it too difficult or too troublesome to release Linux builds. Very insulting towards a huge chunk of its user base. Regarding GUI, how do you initiate a pull request on the command line?
- enraged_camel 11y ago
  "Embarrassing"? "Insulting"? Aren't you taking this a little too personally? I mean, it's a software release for christs sake.
  - igravious 11y ago
    No. Github is built on git. Git was written by Linus Torvalds. You see where this is going? Oh, we'll build our tech on your side project but ignore the user base of your main project. Nice.
  - em3rgent0rdr 11y ago
    It demonstrates a lack of concern/acknowledgement of the diversity of its user base. Especially if they are going to be promoting this on the front page of their website and in my dashboard upon login, which presents me with the broadcast: "GitHub Desktop is now available The new GitHub Desktop is now available" And then I click on it to install it, I feel marginalized and hence a little insulted, when discovering I can't. In this day, there are a great variety of cross-platform gui toolkits (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_platform-independent_GUI_libraries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_platform-independent_G...), that could have been used. It is embarrassing for such a large organisation with all sorts of users using all sorts of machines to not release cross-platform tools. It if was just someone's personal project, or if it was a company's specialized toolkit for their specific customer base, the lack of cross-platform tools is excusable.
    - eropple 11y ago
      > I feel marginalized and hence a little insulted, when discovering I can't. I feel you; I used to be a Linux desktop user and an advocate thereof. But that's the price that you pay for using the distant, distant third most-used OS for a company trying to drive user engagement with their product. You (the collective you) have to be an attractive market if you want commercial entities to consider you worth marketing to, y'know?
angdis 11y ago
Haven't tried it yet, but the history visualization looks very cool. It can be useful to actually SEE branches sometimes. As for why its not on linux desktop? Probably too much work to adapt for many different flavors for a small number of people.
yellowapple 11y ago
> It's likely they felt it's not worth the time This seems strange. Did they not use Electron or Atom Shell or whatever it's called to build Github Desktop? If so, then is it not relatively trivial to create a GNU/Linux (or at least non-OSX-centric Unix) tarball of all the Javascript or whatever? If not so, then why not?
- kitsunesoba 11y ago
  Because Electron is heavy and clunky. It makes no sense for a simple wrapper around a tiny (less than 1MB) commandline tool to have memory and CPU requirements on par with those of an instance of Chromium with a javascript-laden page open in a tab.
  - onewordnowait2 11y ago
    Downloaded it, libcef.dll + many other MBs of browser. But no nodejs. Weird.
  - yellowapple 11y ago
    If it's really just a wrapper around the git command, then I suppose I'm not really interested anyway, then, seeing as the existing Git GUIs for Linux provide that rather well. I was assuming it was like the Mac client where it provides Github-specific functionality (adding "Clone in Desktop" buttons to repo pages, managing pull requests, etc.).
    - kitsunesoba 11y ago
      I was assuming it was like the Mac client where it provides Github-specific functionality (adding "Clone in Desktop" buttons to repo pages, managing pull requests, etc.). It is like the Mac client, but that functionality still doesn’t justify the resource usage than a Chromium wrapper would bring.
      - yellowapple 11y ago
        Right; my point with that was more around the implication that it's just a git wrapper. Regardless, my ultimate point is that Github went through all this trouble to make this Electron Shell thing and they don't even bother using their own tool. That seems surprising, Electron's merits and troubles aside.
harel 11y ago
I use the CLI. Still, that's not the point. Mac users use the CLI too. Some Windows users as well I'm sure. We now live in a Triple-Platform world. Linux is not a sideline project. Its a major Operating System. If OSX gets it (BSD), surely it can be compiled to Linux. Its multi platform anyway so why not go the full distance?!
- victorhooi 11y ago
  I believe they're using native libraries on each platform though - the OSX app is using Cocoa, and the Windows app is using WPF.

zxcvcxz 11y ago

I think it's a myth that Linux users aren't interested in GUI tools. According to stack overflow statistics, Ubuntu is the most popular Linux based OS amongst developers, which is an OS that is much more GUI based than say Arch linux. According to the same stats, Linux and OS X usage is statistically tied at ~21%. If you take into account the fact that only about 2% of computer users run Linux at all it's pretty clear that programmers disproportionately prefer Linux (and to a lesser extent OS X) to other systems. I personally have already moved away from github, but I still wish they would build some tools that work on Linux.

etwigg 11y ago
Shameless plug: I recently built a new linux GUI git client. The people who use it really like it. Still working on docs to better explain what makes it different. Like GitHub's client, it's more than just a wrapper around the CLI, but unlike GitHub's client it exposes git's full power (tags, cherry-pick, rebase, etc.) If you'd like to try a new linux gui client, give it a spin! Video in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4UQpGk1Ry8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4UQpGk1Ry8 Free download Win/Mac/Linux: https://secure.diffplug.com/versions/1.6.1 https://secure.diffplug.com/versions/1.6.1
- Nux 11y ago
  You should publish some screenshots of it.
  - etwigg 11y ago
    100% agree! Was hoping to have the full manual done today, but it's not ready yet. Kinda worked out - I'll spend today ducking as the GitHub goliath whooshes over me for HN readership's attention ;-). The rest of the product's docs are complete and full of screenshots: https://docs.diffplug.com/1.6.1/ViewerDiffers/TextViewerDiffer/ https://docs.diffplug.com/1.6.1/ViewerDiffers/TextViewerDiff... so the git client will be too. This client animates changes to the DAG, so I'm experimenting with animated gifs so that the manual can capture the feel of using it.
- zamalek 11y ago
  Your diffing doesn't suck! That alone is really valuable. What really sucks on Windows is merging: there are very few products that deal with merging at a basic competency level (the git merge markers usually wreak havoc). One criticism: that jgit tab needs a serious UX pass. It's extremely scary looking to someone who has never used it (me). That being said, I'll be keeping a very close eye on your kickstarter. Very close.
  - etwigg 11y ago
    Thanks for the feedback! On the spectrum from "iOS" to "airplane cockpit", I think GitHub is trying to be iPhone, but I think git has enough inherent power (like an aircraft) that you leave a lot of functionality on the table if you constrain yourself to a "no training required" interface. It's certainly something to aspire to, though! If there's anyone out there who thinks they can clean this up, I'm always looking for partners :) Based in SF, open to remote collaboration, contact info in my profile. The differ / merge resolution story is gonna get a whole lot better real soon.
JeremyMorgan 11y ago
I wouldn't try to speak for everyone who uses Linux of course, it's just been my observation. With my "roots" in computing being in the command line driven 80s, I still feel way better using command line stuff and likely will never change. It doesn't mean I am opposed to GUIs in general, there are certainly things I would never consider doing from a command line, but git isn't one of them.
chimeracoder 11y ago
Let me preface this by saying that I am a full-time Linux user and have been for several years. I run Debian on my laptop and Arch Linux on my home machine. Both use i3 (no DE), and I do all my work at the command line or in applications that I launch from the command line[0]. I love the Linux terminal. I don't even own a non-Linux machine, not counting the various OS X devices I've used at work when one is required. > I think it's a myth that Linux users aren't interested in GUI tools. It's definitely a myth, and a very dangerous and self-fulfilling one. I would strongly appreciate a GUI option for many common command-line tools. I like the command-line, and do most of my work there. But sometimes GUI tools are nice to have. The problem is that most GUI tools on Linux really suck, and most Linux tools don't even have a GUI at all[1]. Contrary to popular belief, it's not due to the inadequacy of GUI toolkits on Linux, but simply due to a lack of time actually spent developing these tools. This ends up being self-fulfilling, because it raises the barrier to getting started on Linux, which keeps out people who would be otherwise very comfortable on Linux as an OS, but simply dislike being forced to use the command-line exclusively. [0] Never bothered with dmenu, never really felt the need to set it up. [1] I'm not counting ncurses-based interfaces as GUIs for these purposes.
- ryanlol 11y ago
  I for one feel very uncomfortable using other OSes due to the lack of text UIs. And it seems pretty likely that a vast majority of linux devs feel similarly, considering how few softwares start out with just a GUI instead of the other way around.
- yhager 11y ago
  > I am a full-time Linux user and have been for several years. I run Debian on my laptop and Arch Linux on my home machine. Both use i3 (no DE), and I do all my work at the command line or in applications that I launch from the command line[0]. I love the Linux terminal. I don't even own a non-Linux machine, not counting the various OS X devices I've used at work when one is required. Wow, that's exactly my case as well :). I could've written this, almost word for word (except I run debian on my servers, and archlinux on my laptop/home machines).
craigds 11y ago
I don't think it's a myth, but it definitely is self-fulfilling (since it puts off users who would otherwise use Linux, but don't because they don't want to exclusively use the CLI) Personally I use a mac nowadays but still use and prefer the command line for this kind of thing. I tried using Github for Mac but quickly gave up the first time I had to do something vaguely complicated. I guess I'm still a linux person at heart - you can tell if you prefer to 'brew install everything and have never actually used the App Store except to install Xcode :)
- girvo 11y ago
  My discovery of `brew cask`[0] has meant that the App Store is avoided at nearly all cost. I'm a Linux user at heart, too -- one of the only reasons I use OS X is that it feels like "Unix, but with nice powerful GUI apps as well"! [0] http://caskroom.io/ http://caskroom.io/

vinay427 11y ago

The problem with this attitude is that it makes it far more difficult for Linux distros to gain more varied users. Specifically those who are new to development, or (not really relevant in this case) not developers at all. Instead of pointing to a CLI for everything, which I personally love and support for what it is, it might be worth encouraging companies to develop more cross-platform software that allows for a choice of operating system without many sacrifices.

JeremyMorgan 11y ago
I agree 100%. More GUI tools will most certainly attract more people to Linux and something that shouldn't be overlooked. For the record I was just guessing the reasoning GitHub overlooked it, there could be other reasons I'm unaware of.

barnacs 11y ago

But it's not about git itself. Issues, PR comments, the wiki and such things make github what is. Personally, I'd prefer a nice graphical desktop app to handle these, and either have a terminal embedded or run it alongside the gui to handle the git commands.

em3rgent0rdr 11y ago

It's rather embarrassing that github would consider it too difficult or too troublesome to release Linux builds. Very insulting towards a huge chunk of its user base. Regarding GUI, how do you initiate a pull request on the command line?

enraged_camel 11y ago
"Embarrassing"? "Insulting"? Aren't you taking this a little too personally? I mean, it's a software release for christs sake.
- igravious 11y ago
  No. Github is built on git. Git was written by Linus Torvalds. You see where this is going? Oh, we'll build our tech on your side project but ignore the user base of your main project. Nice.
- em3rgent0rdr 11y ago
  It demonstrates a lack of concern/acknowledgement of the diversity of its user base. Especially if they are going to be promoting this on the front page of their website and in my dashboard upon login, which presents me with the broadcast: "GitHub Desktop is now available The new GitHub Desktop is now available" And then I click on it to install it, I feel marginalized and hence a little insulted, when discovering I can't. In this day, there are a great variety of cross-platform gui toolkits (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_platform-independent_GUI_libraries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_platform-independent_G...), that could have been used. It is embarrassing for such a large organisation with all sorts of users using all sorts of machines to not release cross-platform tools. It if was just someone's personal project, or if it was a company's specialized toolkit for their specific customer base, the lack of cross-platform tools is excusable.
  - eropple 11y ago
    > I feel marginalized and hence a little insulted, when discovering I can't. I feel you; I used to be a Linux desktop user and an advocate thereof. But that's the price that you pay for using the distant, distant third most-used OS for a company trying to drive user engagement with their product. You (the collective you) have to be an attractive market if you want commercial entities to consider you worth marketing to, y'know?

angdis 11y ago

Haven't tried it yet, but the history visualization looks very cool. It can be useful to actually SEE branches sometimes. As for why its not on linux desktop? Probably too much work to adapt for many different flavors for a small number of people.

yellowapple 11y ago

> It's likely they felt it's not worth the time This seems strange. Did they not use Electron or Atom Shell or whatever it's called to build Github Desktop? If so, then is it not relatively trivial to create a GNU/Linux (or at least non-OSX-centric Unix) tarball of all the Javascript or whatever? If not so, then why not?

kitsunesoba 11y ago
Because Electron is heavy and clunky. It makes no sense for a simple wrapper around a tiny (less than 1MB) commandline tool to have memory and CPU requirements on par with those of an instance of Chromium with a javascript-laden page open in a tab.
- onewordnowait2 11y ago
  Downloaded it, libcef.dll + many other MBs of browser. But no nodejs. Weird.
- yellowapple 11y ago
  If it's really just a wrapper around the git command, then I suppose I'm not really interested anyway, then, seeing as the existing Git GUIs for Linux provide that rather well. I was assuming it was like the Mac client where it provides Github-specific functionality (adding "Clone in Desktop" buttons to repo pages, managing pull requests, etc.).
  - kitsunesoba 11y ago
    I was assuming it was like the Mac client where it provides Github-specific functionality (adding "Clone in Desktop" buttons to repo pages, managing pull requests, etc.). It is like the Mac client, but that functionality still doesn’t justify the resource usage than a Chromium wrapper would bring.
    - yellowapple 11y ago
      Right; my point with that was more around the implication that it's just a git wrapper. Regardless, my ultimate point is that Github went through all this trouble to make this Electron Shell thing and they don't even bother using their own tool. That seems surprising, Electron's merits and troubles aside.

harel 11y ago

I use the CLI. Still, that's not the point. Mac users use the CLI too. Some Windows users as well I'm sure. We now live in a Triple-Platform world. Linux is not a sideline project. Its a major Operating System. If OSX gets it (BSD), surely it can be compiled to Linux. Its multi platform anyway so why not go the full distance?!

victorhooi 11y ago
I believe they're using native libraries on each platform though - the OSX app is using Cocoa, and the Windows app is using WPF.