8 ms·

Anthropic, please ship an official Claude Desktop for Linux

538 points by predkambrij 4mo ago

shanewei 4mo ago
What do you miss from the Desktop app that the CLI doesn’t cover? I’m mostly on Linux too and have just been using the CLI, so I’m curious.
- davydm 4mo ago
  Mainly: true sandbox separation. I don't want the model having full access to my machine. With a dump format that Claude understands, I'm able to pass only the files I want Claude to see, and he can't break any of them. I don't care about setting up access lists and so on. I don't trust that the cli product will be properly sanboxed and it's quite clear their software offerings are largely aigen code, and I catch bugs from Claude every day. I also get useful stuff, so it's worth it, but definitely not worth it, imo, to grant it any access to my machine.
  - mathstuf 4mo ago
    There are a number of utilities for this. I use jai: https://jai.scs.stanford.edu/ https://jai.scs.stanford.edu/ but also have seen nono: https://github.com/always-further/nono https://github.com/always-further/nono smolvm: https://github.com/smol-machines/smolvm https://github.com/smol-machines/smolvm zerobox https://github.com/afshinm/zerobox https://github.com/afshinm/zerobox and matchlock https://github.com/jingkaihe/matchlock https://github.com/jingkaihe/matchlock They all have pros and cons. Pick the one that suits you best. Then you're also agent harness flexible (I use opencode).
    - johnsonjo 4mo ago
      As a jai and linux user, myself, looking at nono's os-sandbox (from here [1]) it seems nice too. Thanks for the recommend I was looking for something that might be nice on Mac and nono seems good to recommend to coworkers and the like. [1]: https://nono.sh/os-sandbox https://nono.sh/os-sandbox
    - sophrosyne42 4mo ago
      I would like a solution that was itself not largely written by an AI
      - johnsonjo 4mo ago
        Jai is not written by ai, but only its website is. It's written by a Stanford Computer-Science professor with decades of C++ and Unix/linux experience. > [1]: Was jai written by an AI coding agent? No. While this web site was obviously made by an LLM (ChatGPT read the man page, asked some follow-up questions, and produced a prompt from which claude code built a vitepress site), jai itself was hand implemented by a Stanford computer science professor with decades of C++ and Unix/linux experience. As an experiment, the author did previously try vibe-coding a container, but the results were disastrous and repeatedly put his machine in a state that required a reboot (e.g., recursively changing the attributes of all mounts in the wrong mount namespace). The author does use coding agents to look for bugs, get feedback, and develop tests. However, rest assured that a single human understands every line of C++ in jai. [1] https://jai.scs.stanford.edu/faq.html https://jai.scs.stanford.edu/faq.html
  - _aavaa_ 4mo ago
    If you don’t trust the CLI version to be properly sandbox d, why would the desktop one be?
  - WhyNotHugo 4mo ago
    The cli works on regular sandboxes just fine (podman, docker, bwrap, etc). Sandboxing a GUI is typically more operational overhead than sandboxing a cli (mounting compositor sockets, GPU access, etc).
  - notsirius 4mo ago
    does claude desktop actually solve this issue? I’m on mac and use docker sbx to solve this https://docs.docker.com/ai/sandboxes/get-started/ https://docs.docker.com/ai/sandboxes/get-started/
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
  - jeena 4mo ago
    I made myself a very simple one from the start when I realized it can access everything on my computer https://git.jeena.net/jeena/agent-container https://git.jeena.net/jeena/agent-container my goal was that it would work transparently and the paths and user, etc. would be just the same as on the host but inside of a docker container.
  - johnsonjo 4mo ago
    I've been using jai [1] for sandboxing on linux (although I use opencode and local models and not claude code) and I'm pretty satisfied with it. It comes in three different modes [2]: casual mode, strict mode, and bare mode. Here's some descriptions of each mode: Casual mode [3]: > Your home directory is mounted as a copy-on-write overlay. The jailed process sees your real files, but writes go to $HOME/.jai/default.changes instead of modifying originals, except in the directory where you ran jai. Your current working directory grants full read/write access to code in the jail (unless suppressed with -D). So files deleted there are really gone. /tmp and /var/tmp are private. The rest of the filesystem is read-only. Strict mode [4]: > The process runs as the unprivileged jai system user, not as you. Home directory is an empty private directory at $HOME/.jai/<name>.home. Granted directories (via -d or cwd) are exposed with id-mapped mounts — files look like they are owned by jai inside the jail. Because the process has a different UID, it cannot read files outside your home directory that are only accessible to your user — this is where confidentiality comes from. Bare mode [5]: > Home directory is an empty private directory, like strict mode. But the process runs as your user, not as jai. This means it cannot provide confidentiality — the process can still read any file accessible to your UID outside the home directory. I've always ran my stuff in casual so far just so my whole computer doesn't get rimraffed :P. but I'm thinking of switching to just strict mode, but haven't really vibe coded in a while so I haven't tried it yet. [1]: https://jai.scs.stanford.edu/ https://jai.scs.stanford.edu/ [2]: https://jai.scs.stanford.edu/modes.html https://jai.scs.stanford.edu/modes.html [3]: https://jai.scs.stanford.edu/modes.html#casual-mode https://jai.scs.stanford.edu/modes.html#casual-mode [4]: https://jai.scs.stanford.edu/modes.html#strict-mode https://jai.scs.stanford.edu/modes.html#strict-mode [5]: https://jai.scs.stanford.edu/modes.html#bare-mode https://jai.scs.stanford.edu/modes.html#bare-mode
    - mkagenius 4mo ago
      [dead]
  - FergusArgyll 4mo ago
    On Linux you have bubblewrap!
- SyneRyder 4mo ago
  I don't think the CLI offers daily routines under the Anthropic subscription anymore? There's also the cross conversation memory search, which uses a different conversation dataset (the Claude Web / Claude.AI conversations) than Claude Code does. I'm not even sure Claude Code does cross conversation search? The Desktop interface also presents Markdown as formatted text and presents artifacts (especially interactive ones) better than the CLI can. All that said - I actually use the CLI for nearly everything (even on Windows). Rather than use Claude Desktop for daily "routines" that are capped at 15 total cron-jobs and use extra usage credits, I think I'll continue building my own minimal harness and move my routines to models from other providers.
  - tstrimple 4mo ago
    > There's also the cross conversation memory search, which uses a different conversation dataset (the Claude Web / Claude.AI conversations) than Claude Code does. I'm not even sure Claude Code does cross conversation search? This is one of the first things I “fixed” with skills and hooks. I index every conversation in SQLite and have a skill which knows what to do when I ask it to search the index. I had to avoid the word memory because it’s too tied up in other parts of the context. It even indexes across my different machines. I set this up because I have terrible context discipline. I’ll go off on a tangent in one context and start planning and sometimes implementing something based on that thread which really deserves its own context. Afterward I can create the new context and move relevant bits to it, but I’d lose that initial starting conversation which inherently has more data than the summary in the new context. I also use a few different related contexts. One where I’m building a game engine in zig and another talking about game ideas. There’s a lot of back and forth going on there which needs some shared context. I solve this with a combination of Claude.md references and that searchable session index. Everything I do with scheduled tasks are just wired up with systemd and simple scripts. No LLM in the critical execution path. Again a skill tells CC how I manage those scheduled things so I just have to say something like “run this every day at midnight” and CC has reliably taken care of the rest.
    - outofpaper 4mo ago
      Why not just allow it to grep ~/.claude
- Recursing 4mo ago
  1. Same experience as my non-Linux coworkers, so we can share learnings and processes 2. Scheduled tasks that run locally ( https://support.claude.com/en/articles/13854387-schedule-recurring-tasks-in-claude-cowork https://support.claude.com/en/articles/13854387-schedule-rec... ) importantly different from Claude Code routines 3. Multiple projects/isolated memories in the same folder 4. Better UI
  - nozzlegear 4mo ago
    > Scheduled tasks that run locally ( https://support.claude.com/en/articles/13854387-schedule-rec https://support.claude.com/en/articles/13854387-schedule-rec... ) importantly different from Claude Code routines What do people do with these? I don't use Claude but when I did I couldn't think of anything useful to do with the routines. I'm probably not being imaginative enough.
    - Recursing 4mo ago
      Some good ideas here: https://posthog.com/blog/making-claude-cowork-actually-useful https://posthog.com/blog/making-claude-cowork-actually-usefu...
    - baq 4mo ago
      I’d like the thing to read my mail twice a day and tell me if I missed something important. Haven’t set it up because I’m horrified by the thought of it reading my mail. Doubly so if it decides to do anything other than telling me if I missed something important.
    - thewebguyd 4mo ago
      Cowork is pretty useful for non-technical folk for things you'd traditionally just write a quick little bash or python script for (which really, is what Cowork is doing behind the scenes anyway). I've gotten good results using it at work for keeping track of expense receipts. I dump them into an "Inbox" folder and Claude will OCR them, convert any images to PDF, rename, and move them into year/month/date folders and classify them (cost centers, based on a mapping and examples I gave it). This runs daily, checking the Inbox directory for new items. My next step is getting it to pull them from my email automatically for me as well, or from a specific alias so when I take a pic of a receipt on the go I can just email it and have Claude rename and organize it for me, then it all gets sent off to AP at the end of the month. Non technical knowledge workers have all kinds of little admin tasks like that which Cowork can do for them, where previously they lacked the skills or will to just learn some python and script it themselves.
- dahkenangnon 4mo ago
  The CLI is good for coding tasks but for other things non coding related, having the desktop app can be very useful
- raverbashing 4mo ago
  Or, what does the Desktop app does that the webpage doesn't do?
- TiredOfLife 4mo ago
  Pasting images
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
- mobiuscog 4mo ago
  I would like to see the inline images that Claude suddenly tries to show me, until I remind them that I can't see images in the CLI. Other than that, I am happy with the CLI.
- giancarlostoro 4mo ago
  For one thing, the Desktop app lets me control any remote sessions I have open via the Code functionality.
predkambrij 4mo ago
Cowork already boots Ubuntu 22.04 internally on macOS. The Linux execution path exists inside the product. What's missing is a published build.
Retr0id 4mo ago
If only Anthropic had some kind of automated tool that was good at porting software
- Lionga 4mo ago
  Use the existing Slop they have that needs 1GB of Ram for a simple Terminal app to create an even more slopped Linux app... If only they had any devs at their 500K and way up pay package that could actually write a simple app, that you know does not suck.
  - lioeters 4mo ago
    Those highly paid human devs are hard at work on the Torment Nexus, which is their priority of course, you don't want China to win do you?
    - robby_w_g 4mo ago
      Torment doomers claim that the commodification of humanity’s suffering will usher in a dark age, but quarterly earnings have never been higher. I trust that Death Star Inc has humanity’s best interests at heart.
  - mococa 4mo ago
    You’re asking too much.
- ameliaquining 4mo ago
  It doesn't sound like that's the bottleneck.
- cookiengineer 4mo ago
  You forgot the *allegedly in there.
- smrtinsert 4mo ago
  Sorry that's not the use case anymore its about (checks notes) "forward deployed engineers", yep that's it. Go build!
skeledrew 4mo ago
YES! But also hmm, maybe not. I literally installed the unofficial build[0] a few hours ago, and when I started it and saw a bunch of Electron processes immediately trigger my spawn swarm detector, I just closed it. Don't think I'll ever touch it again. [0] https://github.com/aaddrick/claude-desktop-debian https://github.com/aaddrick/claude-desktop-debian
- aaddrick 4mo ago
  Hey! That's me, and that sounds weird. Mind giving stone more details so I can help get to the source of it? Or just submit an issue on the repo. Should just be one main electron process.
  - aaddrick 4mo ago
    Some more details*
dahkenangnon 4mo ago
We are all waiting for it.
robrain 4mo ago
Just one-shot vibe it for yourself. Lame, I know, but you have to entertain yourself sometimes when the only thing anybody talks about here is ruddy spicy autocorrect and self-inflicted job destruction.
- witx 4mo ago
  > self-inflicted job destruction Glad someone else sees this as well in this crappy website
JohnHaugeland 4mo ago
just use WINE or docker
- syllogistic 4mo ago
  > Just use WINE Did you just tell me to go fuck myself ?
  - xdavidliu 4mo ago
    pull requests are welcome
jeremyjh 4mo ago
If you feel that strongly about it, why not write the issue description yourself?
- endorphine 4mo ago
  Really.. I was scrolling to find a comment complaining for this slop GH issue, which should be 10% of the size of what it is. Surprised me it took so much scrolling to get to this. Like, who reads all that crap?
znpy 4mo ago
That will come the year after the year of linux on. The desktop /s
aaddrick 4mo ago
Hey! I manage the unofficial build at https://github.com/aaddrick/claude-desktop-debian https://github.com/aaddrick/claude-desktop-debian Debian is in the name, but scope has grown to all backends, compositors, etc. The main reason must companies don't publish Linux electron apps is fragmentation. If you're doing anything more than rendering a webpage as an app, it starts to get complicated. I've got a bank of VM's setup for testing, and I still need it up.
- aaddrick 4mo ago
  Still mess it up* Swipe keyboards on mobile are awful, but I can't break that habit.
  - freedomben 4mo ago
    Nice, you have RPMs and DEBs in a remote repo we can add! Thanks for making it so easy to use :-) Also, I can't break the swipe keyboard habit either. It's the worst, but still better than the alternatives. Someday I hope physical keyboard makes a return (but I"m not holding my breath)
    - aaddrick 4mo ago
      You're welcome!
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
  - Kye 4mo ago
    For future reference: you can edit posts for up to 2 hours.
    - Normal_gaussian 4mo ago
      Is that not karma gated?
      - 4mo ago
cyanydeez 4mo ago
Why would they do that with their...checks notes...software changing AI?
- gaiagraphia 4mo ago
  Anthropic one-shotting a Linux distro would be quite the ad... Perplexity are devleoping Comet as an AI-powered browser. I wonder if anybody will take the OS leap.
zoba 4mo ago
Also can you please make it easy to switch between my work and personal accounts on mobile!
- steezeburger 4mo ago
  Yeah that would be great. I seriously don't understand how a company with this much money doesn't have some of the more basic ux implemented to make it a really great app. Blows my mind.
shmoil 4mo ago
>> Anthropic, please ship an official malware for Linux Here, fixed it for you.
taspeotis 4mo ago
Personally I don’t understand why Claude Code doesn’t have a mode to make text green and characters come down from the top of the screen individually, like in The Matrix.
- gaiagraphia 4mo ago
  Massively bugs me. I have to wear green sunglasses, change the language to Japanese, and turn my monitor sideways to get any real work done nowadays.
JSeiko 4mo ago
Yes please! I think it's just kinda weird that this hasn't been done yet.
coretx 4mo ago
Why dont you ask Claude to write you a TUI ?
bytepursuits 4mo ago
I thought going into ipo they were selling the idea that claude is already build claude.
dstnn 4mo ago
You're better off just using code cli
kentf 4mo ago
Our app, Runner: Cowork++ Supports linux :) https://runner.now/ https://runner.now/
himhckr 4mo ago
Not exactly Claude Desktop but we have something more "generic" that works across multiple OSes (written in Tauri) - Msty Claw [1]. It also comes with a companion E2E encrypted mobile app. [1]: https://msty.ai/claw/features https://msty.ai/claw/features
- forsalebypwner 4mo ago
  Thanks, I use DeepSeek and Gemini mostly so I was looking for something that isn't tied to Anthropic. I'm mostly covered by pi.dev but want to try out a GUI to see if they're worth my time. This looks surprisingly feature-complete, too bad it's only "Free for personal use in beta", but I'll definitely give it a spin.
pacificat0r 4mo ago
How can they? They are busy designing agentic loops. They ship 8x more lines of code!!!
shevy-java 4mo ago
Please don't. There is already way too much slop.
rtk_asp 4mo ago
"Sources for the load-bearing claims" I no longer know if this is a real person who is simping for Anthropic and will be ultimately enslaved by Anthropic or if this is an Anthropic ad to have "proof" for the high demand of their services.
- applfanboysbgon 4mo ago
  Neither, it is just a random LLM-generated issue.
  - zombot 4mo ago
    It it was an LLM, why didn't it just vibecode the desired software instead of generating ticket spam?
    - pixl97 4mo ago
      Because using cheap LLMs to spam GH is way less expensive than fixing software with SOTA models.
trumpdong 4mo ago
Doesn't Wayland make it impossible anyway?
- monooso 4mo ago
  In what way?
  - trumpdong 4mo ago
    In the way of eschewing all the APIs that allow an X11 client to control your desktop.
2OEH8eoCRo0 4mo ago
I love the dueling messages on AI "It'll make software easy and replace all software jobs!" "Sorry, a Linux client is too hard and too much work!"
- pixl97 4mo ago
  Interesting take away, but one that I'd think is intrinsically wrong. The Linux desktop is fragmented and gatekept in such a manner that most people of a reasonable mind aren't going to waste tokens on it, and damned sure not going to waste software/support engineer time on it. Note that none of these complaints are about CLI or server software. "Linux" the kernel + GNU utils + shell handle all of this just fine. The year of the Linux desktop is just never going to happen unless one desktop standard takes over and 'wins' in the short to medium term. Now, in the longer term when tokens run cheap maybe we'll successfully have 20 different competing, incompatible Linux deskstops, but it doesn't seem likely.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4mo ago
    Meh. Don't package it then. They could start by releasing source. The Linux community might be fragmented but they're also good at packaging software!
    - pixl97 4mo ago
      Ah yes, the "Everything should be open source", which would be perfect in a perfect world, but alas, we don't live in one of those. Until that point expect Linux desktop to be a third class citizen.
knightops_dev 4mo ago
[flagged]
ddosmax556 4mo ago
Anthropic, if you're reading this: I'm a developer trying to figure out LLMs, I use them 8h per day to do my work. Claude Desktop is a missing piece I don't have access to because I'm only on Linux! I'm happy with a simple AppImage.
neilv 4mo ago
OK, just please be careful how you frame what you're asking for. For software development use of Claude, I'd be happy if the `claude` CLI executable does everything I need, within the Linux KVM VM sandboxes I create for the work, without a desktop client. The cleaner and more trustworthy, the better. Also, for random interactive use of Claude for asking questions, I use it from my host desktop, sandboxed within the Web browser, and I want that to be well-supported. Someone marketing/product person at an AI company will naturally want to dark-pattern push people towards a proprietary desktop client, but that's one corner of abuse potential that we can still keep in check. For agentic automation of my host desktop things and the things they have access to... no, thank you, the state of the art is not ready for that.
- fragmede 4mo ago
  The terribleness of VNC (vs RDP) is what gets you. A GUI client in that VM sucks to access. If it didn't, a GUI client wouldn't be easily rejectable.
  - e12e 4mo ago
    So use RDP? https://www.xrdp.org/ https://www.xrdp.org/ (Or x forwarding over ssh, or waypipie if you only need to access a gui application, not a desktop).
splwjs 4mo ago
What's the market for linux users who want an electron app so they can vibecode in a visual studio fork but wont just build it themselves nor do they want to clone and build someone else's repo
- olivierestsage 4mo ago
  No horse in this race because I don’t want a Claude app, but the median Linux user is increasingly just a normal person who doesn’t want spying telemetry or ads or whatever
  - iknowstuff 4mo ago
    The median linux pc user is on Chrome OS from their school :p
    - giancarlostoro 4mo ago
      I presume they meant if you filter out for Chrome and Android ;)
- giancarlostoro 4mo ago
  Not sure, but I would happily take half the pay of any developer at Anthropic to do that role for them if it gets me Claude Desktop on my Linux box, I do not like third party hacks of Windows Electron apps made to work on Linux, always makes me uncomfortable.
nullpoint420 4mo ago
I'm still surprised at how many developers still turn their noses up at using Linux. Like... You already use Docker and deploy to K8S... On Linux...
- tokioyoyo 4mo ago
  That’s very much not the same thing though?
  - OsrsNeedsf2P 4mo ago
    It kind of is? Why would you not want your development environment to be as close to your deployment environment as possible? Even MacOS bash commands have hiccups every so often. In my experience working with Linux developers, they seem to know the internals of the servers much better and can optimize/debug prod fast - and this understanding is only compounded with LLMs. I'm sure many developers would be equally talented at debugging such issues if we deployed on Windows or MacOS, but virtually no one does that.
    - madeofpalk 4mo ago
      I do other things on my computer apart from bash.
  - giancarlostoro 4mo ago
    Docker was designed for Linux, and on Windows you have to run a VM just to let Docker function.
  - preg_match 4mo ago
    [dead]
- 9dev 4mo ago
  I don’t really care about the OS. I want a beefy laptop with a good keyboard and trackpad, long battery life, and a crisp screen. Preferably very silent, bonus points for a clean design. That’s the value proposition of a MacBook.
LoganDark 4mo ago
"Linux" is not an operating system. One does not "just" release something "for Linux"
- the__alchemist 4mo ago
  Inded. But... Let's say by compiling for Windows and MacOS you are making it work on 80% of users' computers. Then you compile on an older Ubuntu version which will work on any newer Ubuntu or Debian system, and you're at 90%. Worth doing. Then you do a Centos/RH build to get to 95%. This won't work for all Linux users, but that doesn't have to be the bar. Making a few linux builds for the most popular distros is incrementally better than saying it's Windows/Mac only.
ljlolel 4mo ago
I made a way to build Swift apps that build on Linux and run and look the same on MacOS https://github.com/Lore-Hex/QuillUI https://github.com/Lore-Hex/QuillUI I know Claude is electron now but if they made it native swift on macos then they could use this
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
majorbugger 4mo ago
Yeah nah it's yet another security risk. There was an article recently about Claude Code desktop installing some browser files, it wasn't a hole per-se but doesn't make the whole thing trustworthy.
btown 4mo ago
I find Claude Desktop on macOS infinitely better at managing RAM when you have 10+ or more parallel sessions. (Some for different aspects of full stack features, some for managing specific client situations advised by the codebase and its tools!) The CLI is not designed to be lightweight, and it’s easy to get into situations where every CLI session consumes multiple GB of memory alone - stack them up and it’s a lot! And not all terminal GUIs handle multiple tabs well enough to see all sessions at a glance. So on top of the plugin features, desktop is a really useful thing to have!
- IncreasePosts 4mo ago
  What exactly is taking up so much space? Why does it need anything more than whatever the context is? Isn't it just sending text over an API?
  - btown 4mo ago
    So yes, it's a TUI... but it's a TUI rendered by Ink, a React library, with a full JS runtime in the background. The number of re-renders per unit time involved with rerendering a JS implementation of flexbox every new token comes in? That's not a walk in the park for a garbage collector, and a single memory/retention leak can cascade dramatically. I imagine this is part of the impetus behind the Bun acquisition - they have a deep need to push optimization efforts towards the specific patterns that are most relevant to their use cases. (Which are probably good ones for the broader Bun userbase, to be sure, but relative prioritization is something they now have greater control over.)
xacky 4mo ago
Might as well say "Adobe, please ship an official creative suite for Linux", and will probably fall on the same deaf ears.
999900000999 4mo ago
Which Linux. You build it for Ubuntu , people will demand fedora. Build fedora they’ll want Arch. This is fine for FOSS projects where the community can fork and contribute, but as a company I can imagine tons of support tickets coming from Linux users who’s particularly DE/Distro permutation isn’t working right. Still. An App Image would be nice
- kobalsky 4mo ago
  So your argument is "if you give a mouse a cookie"? There are plenty of companies and they just throw us a deb and we do the rest. And even if it were a valid point, why would eye even waste a second of your life argumenting against Linux when it's being asked to a company with a projected 1 trillion dollars IPO. What's your stake here?
  - 999900000999 4mo ago
    The top comment large agrees with me. Your support matrix becomes too vast. However, I do think an app image or I guess a flatpak would be nice.
d1553636d 4mo ago
[flagged]
bcherny 4mo ago
Boris from the team here — we’re looking into it.
- timebeforeland 4mo ago
  Thanks for dropping by. What has been your favorite part of building this tool so far?
- purpleidea 4mo ago
  [dead]
STELLANOVA 4mo ago
This sounds like a really good test for agentic coding and something Anthropic should seriously consider doing as a proof of Claude Code quality. They could easily have agents built per Linux distribution that will run on every new release and do complete testing and publishing. IF they can successfully do that it would be a nice marketing as well. :)
ok_major_9889 4mo ago
I'm building a platform that does just that: https://yeet.cx/docs/ https://yeet.cx/docs/ We give Claude full visibility into your Linux machine, with a JS runtime over the top for building tools.
giorgioz 4mo ago
Come on Linux is the terminal dominion for excellence! Claude Code in terminal all the way!!
0xbadcafebee 4mo ago
This is like begging Microsoft to port SQL Server to Linux. Anthropic is a proprietary walled garden with poor service trading solely on dominance in a single product field, just like Microsoft with its business tools. Yet people are clamoring to become more dependent on them. Those same complaints you hear from Windows users today? Will be the complaints from Claude users in the future. No choice but to put up with it. What else are you gonna do, learn to use Codex? Your company won't pay for it because the users prefer the one tool they already know how to use. Funny how history repeats itself.
- pram 4mo ago
  SQL Server does have a Linux version though lol
  - josteink 4mo ago
    The ARM64 Linux version (Azure version actually) is what I run on my MacBook through docker when I need it for testing.
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
  - 0xbadcafebee 4mo ago
    Yes we use it at work; whether it exists or not was not the point I was making
BlueBerry2001 4mo ago
So true
DaveZale 4mo ago
and make it free so we're not paying to be beta testers ;-)
claudiosilva 4mo ago
[flagged]
prmoustache 4mo ago
You got to love the irony of seeing hundred of users not being able to actually build a desktop version themselves using the cli agent. Are LLMs rendering people that useless?
- jjice 4mo ago
  I avoided it after Anthropic's rampage against `claude -p` to stop Openclaw and didn't want to get hit in the crossfire. It was hard to follow their back and forth, but it seems that's done now?
- hawaiianbrah 4mo ago
  Note “official” in the request… there are unofficial ones.
- bnchrch 4mo ago
  Hard for one person to keep up with a product that ships updates multiple times a day.
- monooso 4mo ago
  Anthropic clamping down on non-first party clients using their subscription plans may also have something to do with it.
CAP_NET_ADMIN 4mo ago
With 10x improvement in per capita code output I'm sure they will get there one day.
make3 4mo ago
This won't fit everyone of course, but I've found that the Cursor / VScode extension of Claude is similar (though not perfect) to the desktop client. It's kind of like letting Microsoft deal with the Electron variability stuff in a way.
misterinfo 4mo ago
Claude Code Prompt: Hey, build me a Claude Desktop for Linux.
braiamp 4mo ago
I find interesting that so many people say that this is a hard problem, while Discord puts this nugget: > Are you a Linux user? If so, are you sick of that lovely modal we made to tell you that there’s an update you need to go manually install? IF SO, boy do I have good news for you. We’ve ported our Rust-based updater to Linux, allowing Linux to update itself just like on Windows. Additionally, we now support .rpm and .pkg.tar.zst package formats for installation. They have more challenging clients: have to deal with screencapture, audio capture, audio routing, meanwhile supporting 3 different package repositories. You just have to accept that you should be updating your build/runtime dependencies with each version as long as they fix your underlying problems. Having a single binary that you release and works, implies that you are shipping every library your binary depends on. Windows takes care of that with winsxs, Linux asks you to do it yourself.
nullbio 4mo ago
OpenAI too. We need Codex app for Linux. For people asking why, the answer is Computer Use.
QuantumNoodle 4mo ago
Goodness, what an unreasonably long description for an issue.
- ameliaquining 4mo ago
  It sounds like a number of less comprehensive issues on this topic were closed without adequate explanation, so the author wanted to be sure to comprehensively explain why the issue was valid and what they were looking for.
reilly3000 4mo ago
I hope they don’t. I hope somehow inexplicably Goose or something wins.
purpleidea 4mo ago
Anthropic is missing the plot by not releasing even the CLI (tui) claude code as open source. On the other hand, Codex is so garbage that as soon as they catch up it will be done for Claude.
meszmate 4mo ago
still no ultracode effort in the desktop app
veidr 4mo ago
"coding is largely solved" and "our app uses Electron" are incompatible, self-refutational statements
samgranieri 4mo ago
I'm game for this, please start with Ubuntu
M95D 4mo ago
> Anthropic, please ship an official Claude Desktop for Linux Which desktop? Which destop version? Which libc? Which versions of the gazillion of other libs it depends on? I can take a Total Commander version from a time when it was called "Windows Commander", compiled for Win95, and it would still run in latest updated Win11. Try that with a linux program! (BTW, for Total Commander it works the other way too: latest Tcmd still runs in Win95.)
- Zetaphor 4mo ago
  This was covered in the issue itself, in fact the issue is pretty well documented with regards to the packaging: > Publish an official Claude Desktop build for Linux, targeting the two current Ubuntu LTS releases (and Debian) as a signed .deb via an Anthropic-operated apt repository, using the same distribution pipeline Claude Code already uses for Linux. Also Flatpak or AppImage would make this accessible to every other distro. Alternatively you could run the deb with a Podman Toolbox. Your point about backwards compatibility with Windows goes both ways, I have old games that I can _only_ run on Linux as they don't work on modern versions of Windows.

538 points by predkambrij 4mo ago

What do you miss from the Desktop app that the CLI doesn’t cover? I’m mostly on Linux too and have just been using the CLI, so I’m curious.

davydm 4mo ago
Mainly: true sandbox separation. I don't want the model having full access to my machine. With a dump format that Claude understands, I'm able to pass only the files I want Claude to see, and he can't break any of them. I don't care about setting up access lists and so on. I don't trust that the cli product will be properly sanboxed and it's quite clear their software offerings are largely aigen code, and I catch bugs from Claude every day. I also get useful stuff, so it's worth it, but definitely not worth it, imo, to grant it any access to my machine.
- mathstuf 4mo ago
  There are a number of utilities for this. I use jai: https://jai.scs.stanford.edu/ https://jai.scs.stanford.edu/ but also have seen nono: https://github.com/always-further/nono https://github.com/always-further/nono smolvm: https://github.com/smol-machines/smolvm https://github.com/smol-machines/smolvm zerobox https://github.com/afshinm/zerobox https://github.com/afshinm/zerobox and matchlock https://github.com/jingkaihe/matchlock https://github.com/jingkaihe/matchlock They all have pros and cons. Pick the one that suits you best. Then you're also agent harness flexible (I use opencode).
  - johnsonjo 4mo ago
    As a jai and linux user, myself, looking at nono's os-sandbox (from here [1]) it seems nice too. Thanks for the recommend I was looking for something that might be nice on Mac and nono seems good to recommend to coworkers and the like. [1]: https://nono.sh/os-sandbox https://nono.sh/os-sandbox
  - sophrosyne42 4mo ago
    I would like a solution that was itself not largely written by an AI
    - johnsonjo 4mo ago
      Jai is not written by ai, but only its website is. It's written by a Stanford Computer-Science professor with decades of C++ and Unix/linux experience. > [1]: Was jai written by an AI coding agent? No. While this web site was obviously made by an LLM (ChatGPT read the man page, asked some follow-up questions, and produced a prompt from which claude code built a vitepress site), jai itself was hand implemented by a Stanford computer science professor with decades of C++ and Unix/linux experience. As an experiment, the author did previously try vibe-coding a container, but the results were disastrous and repeatedly put his machine in a state that required a reboot (e.g., recursively changing the attributes of all mounts in the wrong mount namespace). The author does use coding agents to look for bugs, get feedback, and develop tests. However, rest assured that a single human understands every line of C++ in jai. [1] https://jai.scs.stanford.edu/faq.html https://jai.scs.stanford.edu/faq.html
- _aavaa_ 4mo ago
  If you don’t trust the CLI version to be properly sandbox d, why would the desktop one be?
- WhyNotHugo 4mo ago
  The cli works on regular sandboxes just fine (podman, docker, bwrap, etc). Sandboxing a GUI is typically more operational overhead than sandboxing a cli (mounting compositor sockets, GPU access, etc).
- notsirius 4mo ago
  does claude desktop actually solve this issue? I’m on mac and use docker sbx to solve this https://docs.docker.com/ai/sandboxes/get-started/ https://docs.docker.com/ai/sandboxes/get-started/
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
- jeena 4mo ago
  I made myself a very simple one from the start when I realized it can access everything on my computer https://git.jeena.net/jeena/agent-container https://git.jeena.net/jeena/agent-container my goal was that it would work transparently and the paths and user, etc. would be just the same as on the host but inside of a docker container.
- johnsonjo 4mo ago
  I've been using jai [1] for sandboxing on linux (although I use opencode and local models and not claude code) and I'm pretty satisfied with it. It comes in three different modes [2]: casual mode, strict mode, and bare mode. Here's some descriptions of each mode: Casual mode [3]: > Your home directory is mounted as a copy-on-write overlay. The jailed process sees your real files, but writes go to $HOME/.jai/default.changes instead of modifying originals, except in the directory where you ran jai. Your current working directory grants full read/write access to code in the jail (unless suppressed with -D). So files deleted there are really gone. /tmp and /var/tmp are private. The rest of the filesystem is read-only. Strict mode [4]: > The process runs as the unprivileged jai system user, not as you. Home directory is an empty private directory at $HOME/.jai/<name>.home. Granted directories (via -d or cwd) are exposed with id-mapped mounts — files look like they are owned by jai inside the jail. Because the process has a different UID, it cannot read files outside your home directory that are only accessible to your user — this is where confidentiality comes from. Bare mode [5]: > Home directory is an empty private directory, like strict mode. But the process runs as your user, not as jai. This means it cannot provide confidentiality — the process can still read any file accessible to your UID outside the home directory. I've always ran my stuff in casual so far just so my whole computer doesn't get rimraffed :P. but I'm thinking of switching to just strict mode, but haven't really vibe coded in a while so I haven't tried it yet. [1]: https://jai.scs.stanford.edu/ https://jai.scs.stanford.edu/ [2]: https://jai.scs.stanford.edu/modes.html https://jai.scs.stanford.edu/modes.html [3]: https://jai.scs.stanford.edu/modes.html#casual-mode https://jai.scs.stanford.edu/modes.html#casual-mode [4]: https://jai.scs.stanford.edu/modes.html#strict-mode https://jai.scs.stanford.edu/modes.html#strict-mode [5]: https://jai.scs.stanford.edu/modes.html#bare-mode https://jai.scs.stanford.edu/modes.html#bare-mode
  - mkagenius 4mo ago
    [dead]
- FergusArgyll 4mo ago
  On Linux you have bubblewrap!
SyneRyder 4mo ago
I don't think the CLI offers daily routines under the Anthropic subscription anymore? There's also the cross conversation memory search, which uses a different conversation dataset (the Claude Web / Claude.AI conversations) than Claude Code does. I'm not even sure Claude Code does cross conversation search? The Desktop interface also presents Markdown as formatted text and presents artifacts (especially interactive ones) better than the CLI can. All that said - I actually use the CLI for nearly everything (even on Windows). Rather than use Claude Desktop for daily "routines" that are capped at 15 total cron-jobs and use extra usage credits, I think I'll continue building my own minimal harness and move my routines to models from other providers.
- tstrimple 4mo ago
  > There's also the cross conversation memory search, which uses a different conversation dataset (the Claude Web / Claude.AI conversations) than Claude Code does. I'm not even sure Claude Code does cross conversation search? This is one of the first things I “fixed” with skills and hooks. I index every conversation in SQLite and have a skill which knows what to do when I ask it to search the index. I had to avoid the word memory because it’s too tied up in other parts of the context. It even indexes across my different machines. I set this up because I have terrible context discipline. I’ll go off on a tangent in one context and start planning and sometimes implementing something based on that thread which really deserves its own context. Afterward I can create the new context and move relevant bits to it, but I’d lose that initial starting conversation which inherently has more data than the summary in the new context. I also use a few different related contexts. One where I’m building a game engine in zig and another talking about game ideas. There’s a lot of back and forth going on there which needs some shared context. I solve this with a combination of Claude.md references and that searchable session index. Everything I do with scheduled tasks are just wired up with systemd and simple scripts. No LLM in the critical execution path. Again a skill tells CC how I manage those scheduled things so I just have to say something like “run this every day at midnight” and CC has reliably taken care of the rest.
  - outofpaper 4mo ago
    Why not just allow it to grep ~/.claude
Recursing 4mo ago
1. Same experience as my non-Linux coworkers, so we can share learnings and processes 2. Scheduled tasks that run locally ( https://support.claude.com/en/articles/13854387-schedule-recurring-tasks-in-claude-cowork https://support.claude.com/en/articles/13854387-schedule-rec... ) importantly different from Claude Code routines 3. Multiple projects/isolated memories in the same folder 4. Better UI
- nozzlegear 4mo ago
  > Scheduled tasks that run locally ( https://support.claude.com/en/articles/13854387-schedule-rec https://support.claude.com/en/articles/13854387-schedule-rec... ) importantly different from Claude Code routines What do people do with these? I don't use Claude but when I did I couldn't think of anything useful to do with the routines. I'm probably not being imaginative enough.
  - Recursing 4mo ago
    Some good ideas here: https://posthog.com/blog/making-claude-cowork-actually-useful https://posthog.com/blog/making-claude-cowork-actually-usefu...
  - baq 4mo ago
    I’d like the thing to read my mail twice a day and tell me if I missed something important. Haven’t set it up because I’m horrified by the thought of it reading my mail. Doubly so if it decides to do anything other than telling me if I missed something important.
  - thewebguyd 4mo ago
    Cowork is pretty useful for non-technical folk for things you'd traditionally just write a quick little bash or python script for (which really, is what Cowork is doing behind the scenes anyway). I've gotten good results using it at work for keeping track of expense receipts. I dump them into an "Inbox" folder and Claude will OCR them, convert any images to PDF, rename, and move them into year/month/date folders and classify them (cost centers, based on a mapping and examples I gave it). This runs daily, checking the Inbox directory for new items. My next step is getting it to pull them from my email automatically for me as well, or from a specific alias so when I take a pic of a receipt on the go I can just email it and have Claude rename and organize it for me, then it all gets sent off to AP at the end of the month. Non technical knowledge workers have all kinds of little admin tasks like that which Cowork can do for them, where previously they lacked the skills or will to just learn some python and script it themselves.
dahkenangnon 4mo ago
The CLI is good for coding tasks but for other things non coding related, having the desktop app can be very useful
raverbashing 4mo ago
Or, what does the Desktop app does that the webpage doesn't do?
TiredOfLife 4mo ago
Pasting images
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
mobiuscog 4mo ago
I would like to see the inline images that Claude suddenly tries to show me, until I remind them that I can't see images in the CLI. Other than that, I am happy with the CLI.
giancarlostoro 4mo ago
For one thing, the Desktop app lets me control any remote sessions I have open via the Code functionality.

predkambrij 4mo ago

Cowork already boots Ubuntu 22.04 internally on macOS. The Linux execution path exists inside the product. What's missing is a published build.

Retr0id 4mo ago

If only Anthropic had some kind of automated tool that was good at porting software

Lionga 4mo ago
Use the existing Slop they have that needs 1GB of Ram for a simple Terminal app to create an even more slopped Linux app... If only they had any devs at their 500K and way up pay package that could actually write a simple app, that you know does not suck.
- lioeters 4mo ago
  Those highly paid human devs are hard at work on the Torment Nexus, which is their priority of course, you don't want China to win do you?
  - robby_w_g 4mo ago
    Torment doomers claim that the commodification of humanity’s suffering will usher in a dark age, but quarterly earnings have never been higher. I trust that Death Star Inc has humanity’s best interests at heart.
- mococa 4mo ago
  You’re asking too much.
ameliaquining 4mo ago
It doesn't sound like that's the bottleneck.
cookiengineer 4mo ago
You forgot the *allegedly in there.
smrtinsert 4mo ago
Sorry that's not the use case anymore its about (checks notes) "forward deployed engineers", yep that's it. Go build!

skeledrew 4mo ago

YES! But also hmm, maybe not. I literally installed the unofficial build[0] a few hours ago, and when I started it and saw a bunch of Electron processes immediately trigger my spawn swarm detector, I just closed it. Don't think I'll ever touch it again. [0] https://github.com/aaddrick/claude-desktop-debian https://github.com/aaddrick/claude-desktop-debian

aaddrick 4mo ago
Hey! That's me, and that sounds weird. Mind giving stone more details so I can help get to the source of it? Or just submit an issue on the repo. Should just be one main electron process.
- aaddrick 4mo ago
  Some more details*

dahkenangnon 4mo ago

We are all waiting for it.

robrain 4mo ago

Just one-shot vibe it for yourself. Lame, I know, but you have to entertain yourself sometimes when the only thing anybody talks about here is ruddy spicy autocorrect and self-inflicted job destruction.

witx 4mo ago
> self-inflicted job destruction Glad someone else sees this as well in this crappy website

JohnHaugeland 4mo ago

just use WINE or docker

syllogistic 4mo ago
> Just use WINE Did you just tell me to go fuck myself ?
- xdavidliu 4mo ago
  pull requests are welcome

jeremyjh 4mo ago

If you feel that strongly about it, why not write the issue description yourself?

endorphine 4mo ago
Really.. I was scrolling to find a comment complaining for this slop GH issue, which should be 10% of the size of what it is. Surprised me it took so much scrolling to get to this. Like, who reads all that crap?

znpy 4mo ago

That will come the year after the year of linux on. The desktop /s

aaddrick 4mo ago

Hey! I manage the unofficial build at https://github.com/aaddrick/claude-desktop-debian https://github.com/aaddrick/claude-desktop-debian Debian is in the name, but scope has grown to all backends, compositors, etc. The main reason must companies don't publish Linux electron apps is fragmentation. If you're doing anything more than rendering a webpage as an app, it starts to get complicated. I've got a bank of VM's setup for testing, and I still need it up.

aaddrick 4mo ago
Still mess it up* Swipe keyboards on mobile are awful, but I can't break that habit.
- freedomben 4mo ago
  Nice, you have RPMs and DEBs in a remote repo we can add! Thanks for making it so easy to use :-) Also, I can't break the swipe keyboard habit either. It's the worst, but still better than the alternatives. Someday I hope physical keyboard makes a return (but I"m not holding my breath)
  - aaddrick 4mo ago
    You're welcome!
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
- Kye 4mo ago
  For future reference: you can edit posts for up to 2 hours.
  - Normal_gaussian 4mo ago
    Is that not karma gated?
    - 4mo ago

cyanydeez 4mo ago

Why would they do that with their...checks notes...software changing AI?

gaiagraphia 4mo ago
Anthropic one-shotting a Linux distro would be quite the ad... Perplexity are devleoping Comet as an AI-powered browser. I wonder if anybody will take the OS leap.

zoba 4mo ago

Also can you please make it easy to switch between my work and personal accounts on mobile!

steezeburger 4mo ago
Yeah that would be great. I seriously don't understand how a company with this much money doesn't have some of the more basic ux implemented to make it a really great app. Blows my mind.

shmoil 4mo ago

>> Anthropic, please ship an official malware for Linux Here, fixed it for you.

taspeotis 4mo ago

Personally I don’t understand why Claude Code doesn’t have a mode to make text green and characters come down from the top of the screen individually, like in The Matrix.

gaiagraphia 4mo ago
Massively bugs me. I have to wear green sunglasses, change the language to Japanese, and turn my monitor sideways to get any real work done nowadays.

JSeiko 4mo ago

Yes please! I think it's just kinda weird that this hasn't been done yet.

coretx 4mo ago

Why dont you ask Claude to write you a TUI ?

bytepursuits 4mo ago

I thought going into ipo they were selling the idea that claude is already build claude.

dstnn 4mo ago

You're better off just using code cli

kentf 4mo ago

Our app, Runner: Cowork++ Supports linux :) https://runner.now/ https://runner.now/

himhckr 4mo ago

Not exactly Claude Desktop but we have something more "generic" that works across multiple OSes (written in Tauri) - Msty Claw [1]. It also comes with a companion E2E encrypted mobile app. [1]: https://msty.ai/claw/features https://msty.ai/claw/features

forsalebypwner 4mo ago
Thanks, I use DeepSeek and Gemini mostly so I was looking for something that isn't tied to Anthropic. I'm mostly covered by pi.dev but want to try out a GUI to see if they're worth my time. This looks surprisingly feature-complete, too bad it's only "Free for personal use in beta", but I'll definitely give it a spin.

pacificat0r 4mo ago

How can they? They are busy designing agentic loops. They ship 8x more lines of code!!!

shevy-java 4mo ago

Please don't. There is already way too much slop.

rtk_asp 4mo ago

"Sources for the load-bearing claims" I no longer know if this is a real person who is simping for Anthropic and will be ultimately enslaved by Anthropic or if this is an Anthropic ad to have "proof" for the high demand of their services.

applfanboysbgon 4mo ago
Neither, it is just a random LLM-generated issue.
- zombot 4mo ago
  It it was an LLM, why didn't it just vibecode the desired software instead of generating ticket spam?
  - pixl97 4mo ago
    Because using cheap LLMs to spam GH is way less expensive than fixing software with SOTA models.

trumpdong 4mo ago

Doesn't Wayland make it impossible anyway?

monooso 4mo ago
In what way?
- trumpdong 4mo ago
  In the way of eschewing all the APIs that allow an X11 client to control your desktop.

2OEH8eoCRo0 4mo ago

I love the dueling messages on AI "It'll make software easy and replace all software jobs!" "Sorry, a Linux client is too hard and too much work!"

pixl97 4mo ago
Interesting take away, but one that I'd think is intrinsically wrong. The Linux desktop is fragmented and gatekept in such a manner that most people of a reasonable mind aren't going to waste tokens on it, and damned sure not going to waste software/support engineer time on it. Note that none of these complaints are about CLI or server software. "Linux" the kernel + GNU utils + shell handle all of this just fine. The year of the Linux desktop is just never going to happen unless one desktop standard takes over and 'wins' in the short to medium term. Now, in the longer term when tokens run cheap maybe we'll successfully have 20 different competing, incompatible Linux deskstops, but it doesn't seem likely.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4mo ago
  Meh. Don't package it then. They could start by releasing source. The Linux community might be fragmented but they're also good at packaging software!
  - pixl97 4mo ago
    Ah yes, the "Everything should be open source", which would be perfect in a perfect world, but alas, we don't live in one of those. Until that point expect Linux desktop to be a third class citizen.

knightops_dev 4mo ago

[flagged]

ddosmax556 4mo ago

Anthropic, if you're reading this: I'm a developer trying to figure out LLMs, I use them 8h per day to do my work. Claude Desktop is a missing piece I don't have access to because I'm only on Linux! I'm happy with a simple AppImage.

neilv 4mo ago

OK, just please be careful how you frame what you're asking for. For software development use of Claude, I'd be happy if the `claude` CLI executable does everything I need, within the Linux KVM VM sandboxes I create for the work, without a desktop client. The cleaner and more trustworthy, the better. Also, for random interactive use of Claude for asking questions, I use it from my host desktop, sandboxed within the Web browser, and I want that to be well-supported. Someone marketing/product person at an AI company will naturally want to dark-pattern push people towards a proprietary desktop client, but that's one corner of abuse potential that we can still keep in check. For agentic automation of my host desktop things and the things they have access to... no, thank you, the state of the art is not ready for that.

fragmede 4mo ago
The terribleness of VNC (vs RDP) is what gets you. A GUI client in that VM sucks to access. If it didn't, a GUI client wouldn't be easily rejectable.
- e12e 4mo ago
  So use RDP? https://www.xrdp.org/ https://www.xrdp.org/ (Or x forwarding over ssh, or waypipie if you only need to access a gui application, not a desktop).

splwjs 4mo ago

What's the market for linux users who want an electron app so they can vibecode in a visual studio fork but wont just build it themselves nor do they want to clone and build someone else's repo

olivierestsage 4mo ago
No horse in this race because I don’t want a Claude app, but the median Linux user is increasingly just a normal person who doesn’t want spying telemetry or ads or whatever
- iknowstuff 4mo ago
  The median linux pc user is on Chrome OS from their school :p
  - giancarlostoro 4mo ago
    I presume they meant if you filter out for Chrome and Android ;)
giancarlostoro 4mo ago
Not sure, but I would happily take half the pay of any developer at Anthropic to do that role for them if it gets me Claude Desktop on my Linux box, I do not like third party hacks of Windows Electron apps made to work on Linux, always makes me uncomfortable.

nullpoint420 4mo ago

I'm still surprised at how many developers still turn their noses up at using Linux. Like... You already use Docker and deploy to K8S... On Linux...

tokioyoyo 4mo ago
That’s very much not the same thing though?
- OsrsNeedsf2P 4mo ago
  It kind of is? Why would you not want your development environment to be as close to your deployment environment as possible? Even MacOS bash commands have hiccups every so often. In my experience working with Linux developers, they seem to know the internals of the servers much better and can optimize/debug prod fast - and this understanding is only compounded with LLMs. I'm sure many developers would be equally talented at debugging such issues if we deployed on Windows or MacOS, but virtually no one does that.
  - madeofpalk 4mo ago
    I do other things on my computer apart from bash.
- giancarlostoro 4mo ago
  Docker was designed for Linux, and on Windows you have to run a VM just to let Docker function.
- preg_match 4mo ago
  [dead]
9dev 4mo ago
I don’t really care about the OS. I want a beefy laptop with a good keyboard and trackpad, long battery life, and a crisp screen. Preferably very silent, bonus points for a clean design. That’s the value proposition of a MacBook.

LoganDark 4mo ago

"Linux" is not an operating system. One does not "just" release something "for Linux"

the__alchemist 4mo ago
Inded. But... Let's say by compiling for Windows and MacOS you are making it work on 80% of users' computers. Then you compile on an older Ubuntu version which will work on any newer Ubuntu or Debian system, and you're at 90%. Worth doing. Then you do a Centos/RH build to get to 95%. This won't work for all Linux users, but that doesn't have to be the bar. Making a few linux builds for the most popular distros is incrementally better than saying it's Windows/Mac only.

ljlolel 4mo ago

I made a way to build Swift apps that build on Linux and run and look the same on MacOS https://github.com/Lore-Hex/QuillUI https://github.com/Lore-Hex/QuillUI I know Claude is electron now but if they made it native swift on macos then they could use this

deleted 4mo ago

[deleted]

majorbugger 4mo ago

Yeah nah it's yet another security risk. There was an article recently about Claude Code desktop installing some browser files, it wasn't a hole per-se but doesn't make the whole thing trustworthy.

btown 4mo ago

I find Claude Desktop on macOS infinitely better at managing RAM when you have 10+ or more parallel sessions. (Some for different aspects of full stack features, some for managing specific client situations advised by the codebase and its tools!) The CLI is not designed to be lightweight, and it’s easy to get into situations where every CLI session consumes multiple GB of memory alone - stack them up and it’s a lot! And not all terminal GUIs handle multiple tabs well enough to see all sessions at a glance. So on top of the plugin features, desktop is a really useful thing to have!

IncreasePosts 4mo ago
What exactly is taking up so much space? Why does it need anything more than whatever the context is? Isn't it just sending text over an API?
- btown 4mo ago
  So yes, it's a TUI... but it's a TUI rendered by Ink, a React library, with a full JS runtime in the background. The number of re-renders per unit time involved with rerendering a JS implementation of flexbox every new token comes in? That's not a walk in the park for a garbage collector, and a single memory/retention leak can cascade dramatically. I imagine this is part of the impetus behind the Bun acquisition - they have a deep need to push optimization efforts towards the specific patterns that are most relevant to their use cases. (Which are probably good ones for the broader Bun userbase, to be sure, but relative prioritization is something they now have greater control over.)

xacky 4mo ago

Might as well say "Adobe, please ship an official creative suite for Linux", and will probably fall on the same deaf ears.

999900000999 4mo ago

Which Linux. You build it for Ubuntu , people will demand fedora. Build fedora they’ll want Arch. This is fine for FOSS projects where the community can fork and contribute, but as a company I can imagine tons of support tickets coming from Linux users who’s particularly DE/Distro permutation isn’t working right. Still. An App Image would be nice

kobalsky 4mo ago
So your argument is "if you give a mouse a cookie"? There are plenty of companies and they just throw us a deb and we do the rest. And even if it were a valid point, why would eye even waste a second of your life argumenting against Linux when it's being asked to a company with a projected 1 trillion dollars IPO. What's your stake here?
- 999900000999 4mo ago
  The top comment large agrees with me. Your support matrix becomes too vast. However, I do think an app image or I guess a flatpak would be nice.

d1553636d 4mo ago

[flagged]

bcherny 4mo ago

Boris from the team here — we’re looking into it.

timebeforeland 4mo ago
Thanks for dropping by. What has been your favorite part of building this tool so far?
purpleidea 4mo ago
[dead]

STELLANOVA 4mo ago

This sounds like a really good test for agentic coding and something Anthropic should seriously consider doing as a proof of Claude Code quality. They could easily have agents built per Linux distribution that will run on every new release and do complete testing and publishing. IF they can successfully do that it would be a nice marketing as well. :)

ok_major_9889 4mo ago

I'm building a platform that does just that: https://yeet.cx/docs/ https://yeet.cx/docs/ We give Claude full visibility into your Linux machine, with a JS runtime over the top for building tools.

giorgioz 4mo ago

Come on Linux is the terminal dominion for excellence! Claude Code in terminal all the way!!

0xbadcafebee 4mo ago

This is like begging Microsoft to port SQL Server to Linux. Anthropic is a proprietary walled garden with poor service trading solely on dominance in a single product field, just like Microsoft with its business tools. Yet people are clamoring to become more dependent on them. Those same complaints you hear from Windows users today? Will be the complaints from Claude users in the future. No choice but to put up with it. What else are you gonna do, learn to use Codex? Your company won't pay for it because the users prefer the one tool they already know how to use. Funny how history repeats itself.

pram 4mo ago
SQL Server does have a Linux version though lol
- josteink 4mo ago
  The ARM64 Linux version (Azure version actually) is what I run on my MacBook through docker when I need it for testing.
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
- 0xbadcafebee 4mo ago
  Yes we use it at work; whether it exists or not was not the point I was making

BlueBerry2001 4mo ago

So true

DaveZale 4mo ago

and make it free so we're not paying to be beta testers ;-)

claudiosilva 4mo ago

[flagged]

prmoustache 4mo ago

You got to love the irony of seeing hundred of users not being able to actually build a desktop version themselves using the cli agent. Are LLMs rendering people that useless?

jjice 4mo ago
I avoided it after Anthropic's rampage against `claude -p` to stop Openclaw and didn't want to get hit in the crossfire. It was hard to follow their back and forth, but it seems that's done now?
hawaiianbrah 4mo ago
Note “official” in the request… there are unofficial ones.
bnchrch 4mo ago
Hard for one person to keep up with a product that ships updates multiple times a day.
monooso 4mo ago
Anthropic clamping down on non-first party clients using their subscription plans may also have something to do with it.

CAP_NET_ADMIN 4mo ago

With 10x improvement in per capita code output I'm sure they will get there one day.

make3 4mo ago

This won't fit everyone of course, but I've found that the Cursor / VScode extension of Claude is similar (though not perfect) to the desktop client. It's kind of like letting Microsoft deal with the Electron variability stuff in a way.

misterinfo 4mo ago

Claude Code Prompt: Hey, build me a Claude Desktop for Linux.

braiamp 4mo ago

I find interesting that so many people say that this is a hard problem, while Discord puts this nugget: > Are you a Linux user? If so, are you sick of that lovely modal we made to tell you that there’s an update you need to go manually install? IF SO, boy do I have good news for you. We’ve ported our Rust-based updater to Linux, allowing Linux to update itself just like on Windows. Additionally, we now support .rpm and .pkg.tar.zst package formats for installation. They have more challenging clients: have to deal with screencapture, audio capture, audio routing, meanwhile supporting 3 different package repositories. You just have to accept that you should be updating your build/runtime dependencies with each version as long as they fix your underlying problems. Having a single binary that you release and works, implies that you are shipping every library your binary depends on. Windows takes care of that with winsxs, Linux asks you to do it yourself.

nullbio 4mo ago

OpenAI too. We need Codex app for Linux. For people asking why, the answer is Computer Use.

QuantumNoodle 4mo ago

Goodness, what an unreasonably long description for an issue.

ameliaquining 4mo ago
It sounds like a number of less comprehensive issues on this topic were closed without adequate explanation, so the author wanted to be sure to comprehensively explain why the issue was valid and what they were looking for.

reilly3000 4mo ago

I hope they don’t. I hope somehow inexplicably Goose or something wins.

purpleidea 4mo ago

Anthropic is missing the plot by not releasing even the CLI (tui) claude code as open source. On the other hand, Codex is so garbage that as soon as they catch up it will be done for Claude.

meszmate 4mo ago

still no ultracode effort in the desktop app

veidr 4mo ago

"coding is largely solved" and "our app uses Electron" are incompatible, self-refutational statements

samgranieri 4mo ago

I'm game for this, please start with Ubuntu

M95D 4mo ago

> Anthropic, please ship an official Claude Desktop for Linux Which desktop? Which destop version? Which libc? Which versions of the gazillion of other libs it depends on? I can take a Total Commander version from a time when it was called "Windows Commander", compiled for Win95, and it would still run in latest updated Win11. Try that with a linux program! (BTW, for Total Commander it works the other way too: latest Tcmd still runs in Win95.)

Zetaphor 4mo ago
This was covered in the issue itself, in fact the issue is pretty well documented with regards to the packaging: > Publish an official Claude Desktop build for Linux, targeting the two current Ubuntu LTS releases (and Debian) as a signed .deb via an Anthropic-operated apt repository, using the same distribution pipeline Claude Code already uses for Linux. Also Flatpak or AppImage would make this accessible to every other distro. Alternatively you could run the deb with a Podman Toolbox. Your point about backwards compatibility with Windows goes both ways, I have old games that I can _only_ run on Linux as they don't work on modern versions of Windows.