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Flutter is the default choice for future Ubuntu apps

56 points by dangwu 6y ago

bithavoc 6y ago
Can I use flutter without Material Design? It’s one of the things that throws me off about it, all the examples look like Android apps.
- Apocryphon 6y ago
  Yes! Flutter already supports iOS design with Cupertino widgets. It’s meant to be customizable so I’m sure other themes exist.
  - bithavoc 6y ago
    Wow nice, I didn’t know Cupertino widgets exist[0]. I guess we need them for Windows and Mac so it looks and feels native, I need to try that. Thanks [0]https://flutter.dev/docs/development/ui/widgets/cupertino https://flutter.dev/docs/development/ui/widgets/cupertino
- simosx 6y ago
  Oh, on Linux, Flutter apps will have the default Ubuntu theme.
- tvolkert 6y ago
  Flutter team member here. Yes you can! In fact, Flutter's design is layered in order to allow developers to customize it at whatever layer works for them. So in addition to being able to use Cupertino widgets out of the box (as referenced in another reply), you can also design your own widget look-and-feel if needed by extending the "widgets" library.
ajfjrbfbf 6y ago
What's wrong with GTK?
- Apocryphon 6y ago
  Maybe Canonical is planning a mobile reentry.
- simosx 6y ago
  It is not much of a question of what's wrong with GTK, Qt, etc. Flutter is cross-platform. Canonical is doing the work for Linux. Toyota is doing the work for embedded devices (to use in their cars). Microsoft is doing the work for their foldable tablets. At the moment, Flutter has the momentum to be the UI for everything. Whether it will pan out, we will be here to see.
- baybal2 6y ago
  Bad choice, but logic is easy to understand. Gtk was killing Ubuntu, and they chose to be killed by Flutter instead. The bad about what Gtk is now is it has turned from the "Gimp Toolkit" to "GNOME Toolkit" with upstream thinking that's how it's supposed to be, and unwilling to rectify. Flutter being a mess as it is, comes after it completely, inherently unsuitable for Linux, and desktop use.
  - canadianfella 6y ago
    I have no idea what you are trying to say.
qnsi 6y ago
Meanwhile any news about fuchsia?
- Mrnothing_ 6y ago
  fuchsia was never anunced but have more devs now than befor is not easy make a fucking os, i think you can test in some laptop, if they want somthing usfull need at least 5 to 10 more years of development. I think the first we can see whit fuchsia will be iot device.
  - canadianfella 6y ago
    Spellcheck. Jesus.
argvargc 6y ago
Because Flutter came from Google, I've never considered it. EDIT: to those downvoting, this is a serious, sincere question: I realise it's a UI framework, but are there any investigations into it phoning home/tracking users etc? Does it pull any resources from Google at runtime for example?
- timsneath 6y ago
  Disclosure: I'm on the Flutter team. We capture a small amount of analytics from the developer tool itself, primarily to help us spot and fix crashes as well as to help us improve the tooling. Completely anonymous, we prompt you on installation, and you can disable it completely using the command 'flutter config --no-analytics'. Flutter does not capture or upload any information from users running apps compiled with it. The SDK is all open source, of course, so you can see exactly what we do upload.
  - zodiakzz 6y ago
    Appreciate the transparency. But nitpick about terminology: telemetry over HTTP can never be "completely anonymous" by any stretch because of users' IP address being tied to it. Unless you're sending analytics over Tor...?
    - tvolkert 6y ago
      Flutter team member here. Valid nitpick, and I can confirm that we scrub any personally identifiable information (PII) from our telemetry, so while the IP is sent over HTTP, it's not stored in our system. We even go so far as to scrub the exception message, since it may contain PII. More information about our crash reports can be found at https://github.com/flutter/flutter/wiki/Flutter-CLI-crash-reporting https://github.com/flutter/flutter/wiki/Flutter-CLI-crash-re...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Hixie 6y ago
  We don't pull any resources from Google (or any of the other companies who contribute to Flutter, like Microsoft, Cannonical, Nevercode, etc) at runtime. During development time we pull binaries from Google servers (for lack of a better place to put them mostly) and source from GitHub, and as Tim said there's some analytics (there's a big message saying how to opt of analytics when you first start the flutter command line tool). I know the web site says Flutter is "made by Google" but that's really underselling how much Flutter is a group effort by lots of contributors, a (very active) minority of which happen to work for Google. The whole project is open source, there's no closed-source component, and lots of people build their own binaries, for what it's worth. So you don't have to trust me on any of this. :-)
remir 6y ago
I'm curious to see if Flutter could be a viable alternative to Electron for multi-platform apps.
- blacktriangle 6y ago
  That's setting the bar really low.
Barrin92 6y ago
recently dabbled in building a mobile app for the first time and of the few frameworks I tried I liked Flutter a lot. It's very complete, Dart was easy to learn and just pleasant. Would be nice to see it on the desktop as well. I've usually sticked to Qt but they seem to be getting more and more restrictive with their licensing.
leoedin 6y ago
I wrote a simple interactive calculator type app in Flutter recently and found the experience mostly good. However, the documentation is _terrible_. It looks OK initially - but then you need to use it to find a specific piece of information, and it all falls apart. Hopefully Flutter 2 will improve on this.
qnxub 6y ago
Calling it now: Ubuntu is working on a Fuchsia distro.
InitEnabler 6y ago
Soooo Flutter desktop environment. Is that even possible?
eska 6y ago
I read Google's announcement about Flutter 2, and saw that Google Pay switched to it. Of course their developers loved it. So I had a look at the app reviews for Google Pay: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.nbu.paisa.user&showAllReviews=true https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and... Everyone laments how the old version was better, the new one is prettied up, bloated, and slower as a result.

56 points by dangwu 6y ago

Can I use flutter without Material Design? It’s one of the things that throws me off about it, all the examples look like Android apps.

Apocryphon 6y ago
Yes! Flutter already supports iOS design with Cupertino widgets. It’s meant to be customizable so I’m sure other themes exist.
- bithavoc 6y ago
  Wow nice, I didn’t know Cupertino widgets exist[0]. I guess we need them for Windows and Mac so it looks and feels native, I need to try that. Thanks [0]https://flutter.dev/docs/development/ui/widgets/cupertino https://flutter.dev/docs/development/ui/widgets/cupertino
simosx 6y ago
Oh, on Linux, Flutter apps will have the default Ubuntu theme.
tvolkert 6y ago
Flutter team member here. Yes you can! In fact, Flutter's design is layered in order to allow developers to customize it at whatever layer works for them. So in addition to being able to use Cupertino widgets out of the box (as referenced in another reply), you can also design your own widget look-and-feel if needed by extending the "widgets" library.

ajfjrbfbf 6y ago

What's wrong with GTK?

Apocryphon 6y ago
Maybe Canonical is planning a mobile reentry.
simosx 6y ago
It is not much of a question of what's wrong with GTK, Qt, etc. Flutter is cross-platform. Canonical is doing the work for Linux. Toyota is doing the work for embedded devices (to use in their cars). Microsoft is doing the work for their foldable tablets. At the moment, Flutter has the momentum to be the UI for everything. Whether it will pan out, we will be here to see.
baybal2 6y ago
Bad choice, but logic is easy to understand. Gtk was killing Ubuntu, and they chose to be killed by Flutter instead. The bad about what Gtk is now is it has turned from the "Gimp Toolkit" to "GNOME Toolkit" with upstream thinking that's how it's supposed to be, and unwilling to rectify. Flutter being a mess as it is, comes after it completely, inherently unsuitable for Linux, and desktop use.
- canadianfella 6y ago
  I have no idea what you are trying to say.

qnsi 6y ago

Meanwhile any news about fuchsia?

Mrnothing_ 6y ago
fuchsia was never anunced but have more devs now than befor is not easy make a fucking os, i think you can test in some laptop, if they want somthing usfull need at least 5 to 10 more years of development. I think the first we can see whit fuchsia will be iot device.
- canadianfella 6y ago
  Spellcheck. Jesus.

argvargc 6y ago

Because Flutter came from Google, I've never considered it. EDIT: to those downvoting, this is a serious, sincere question: I realise it's a UI framework, but are there any investigations into it phoning home/tracking users etc? Does it pull any resources from Google at runtime for example?

timsneath 6y ago
Disclosure: I'm on the Flutter team. We capture a small amount of analytics from the developer tool itself, primarily to help us spot and fix crashes as well as to help us improve the tooling. Completely anonymous, we prompt you on installation, and you can disable it completely using the command 'flutter config --no-analytics'. Flutter does not capture or upload any information from users running apps compiled with it. The SDK is all open source, of course, so you can see exactly what we do upload.
- zodiakzz 6y ago
  Appreciate the transparency. But nitpick about terminology: telemetry over HTTP can never be "completely anonymous" by any stretch because of users' IP address being tied to it. Unless you're sending analytics over Tor...?
  - tvolkert 6y ago
    Flutter team member here. Valid nitpick, and I can confirm that we scrub any personally identifiable information (PII) from our telemetry, so while the IP is sent over HTTP, it's not stored in our system. We even go so far as to scrub the exception message, since it may contain PII. More information about our crash reports can be found at https://github.com/flutter/flutter/wiki/Flutter-CLI-crash-reporting https://github.com/flutter/flutter/wiki/Flutter-CLI-crash-re...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Hixie 6y ago
We don't pull any resources from Google (or any of the other companies who contribute to Flutter, like Microsoft, Cannonical, Nevercode, etc) at runtime. During development time we pull binaries from Google servers (for lack of a better place to put them mostly) and source from GitHub, and as Tim said there's some analytics (there's a big message saying how to opt of analytics when you first start the flutter command line tool). I know the web site says Flutter is "made by Google" but that's really underselling how much Flutter is a group effort by lots of contributors, a (very active) minority of which happen to work for Google. The whole project is open source, there's no closed-source component, and lots of people build their own binaries, for what it's worth. So you don't have to trust me on any of this. :-)

remir 6y ago

I'm curious to see if Flutter could be a viable alternative to Electron for multi-platform apps.

blacktriangle 6y ago
That's setting the bar really low.

Barrin92 6y ago

recently dabbled in building a mobile app for the first time and of the few frameworks I tried I liked Flutter a lot. It's very complete, Dart was easy to learn and just pleasant. Would be nice to see it on the desktop as well. I've usually sticked to Qt but they seem to be getting more and more restrictive with their licensing.

leoedin 6y ago

I wrote a simple interactive calculator type app in Flutter recently and found the experience mostly good. However, the documentation is _terrible_. It looks OK initially - but then you need to use it to find a specific piece of information, and it all falls apart. Hopefully Flutter 2 will improve on this.

qnxub 6y ago

Calling it now: Ubuntu is working on a Fuchsia distro.

InitEnabler 6y ago

Soooo Flutter desktop environment. Is that even possible?

eska 6y ago

I read Google's announcement about Flutter 2, and saw that Google Pay switched to it. Of course their developers loved it. So I had a look at the app reviews for Google Pay: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.nbu.paisa.user&showAllReviews=true https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and... Everyone laments how the old version was better, the new one is prettied up, bloated, and slower as a result.