6 ms·

Can you imagine writing desktop software for Linux? Inconsistent APIs, API breakage, ABI breakage, sizable variances between distributions, multiple desktops UI

by pbsdp 13y ago

Can you imagine writing desktop software for Linux? Inconsistent APIs, API breakage, ABI breakage, sizable variances between distributions, multiple desktops UI implementations, and you may as well just forget about mobile. I'm not justifying Apple's ever increasing shift towards enacting strict constraints on their platform developers, but the comparison with Linux is pointless.

drivebyacct2 13y ago
That's the biggest load of absurd shit I've ever heard.
berkut 13y ago
What rubbish. Any specifics, or are you just trolling? The company I work for develops high-end desktop software for Linux, Mac and Windows, and Linux generally causes us the least trouble and OS X (thanks mostly to atrocious graphics drivers and OpenGL support in addition to really bad memory allocation/paging issues that have only just been fixed in Mountain Lion) the most trouble. And this is on limited numbers of hardware and software variations for OS X.
- kabdib 13y ago
  What versions of Linux do you target?
  - berkut 13y ago
    We "officially support" RHEL 5.4 and RHEL 6.0 (and thus corresponding CentOSes). But we've got customers running everything from RHEL 4.5 to the latest and greatest Ubuntus, Mints and Arch. All with the same binary installers. The only linux-related weirdness I can recall in the last two years distro-wise was Scientific Linux, which seemed to have some weird XOrg config issues.
    - kabdib 13y ago
      Thank you. Like others, I had no idea that Linux was that stable in the practical levels above its ABI.
    - pbsdp 13y ago
      > All with the same binary installers. So you integrate with the user's desktop environment, using standard local widgets, theming, integration with UX guidelines, local library dependencies, etc? Or are you shipping a Qt app with your own dependencies included? If so, Qt is pretty notoriously buggy on OS X (and rightfully disliked by most users as it stands outside all platform conventions), perhaps explaining some of your complaints.
      - berkut 13y ago
        Local widgets & theming yes, although generally we ship with our own themes by default as we make VFX apps, and the last thing artists want is bright UI to distract them. I don't believe there are general UX guidelines for Linuxes, but for things like notification popups, system tray stuff, yeah, we do all that natively to the distro through Qt (DBus handles all that transparently within Qt very nicely). We ship Qt as shared libs with the binaries and all dependencies we need system-wise statically - i.e. zlib, libpng, libjpeg are statically linked. For things like embedded Python, we have to do the same on OS X anyway, due to different python and zlib versions per OS X version. As for Qt and OS X regarding nativeness - I keep hearing this, but I never see any good examples. I agree it's possible to create Qt Apps on OS X that looks crap, but it's also possible to make them look native as far as I'm concerned. The only thing I can remember not being able to easily do in Qt regarding OS X widgets is the horizontal grouping of side-by-side buttons in radio-button fashion. But it's easy enough to knock up a QWidget subclass which replicates this. But admittedly I don't think I've tried to replicate every possible OS X control/widget... I think what might be the most difficult part of making a Qt app on OS X look native is the layout and spacing stuff, which generally does seem to be a bit crap within Qt on OS X. I can have the same code to do a side-panel with edit values in a panel, and it looks great on Linux and Windows: http://imgur.com/kUI90ry http://imgur.com/kUI90ry on OS X: http://imgur.com/yqigBdw http://imgur.com/yqigBdw and the spacing and padding is all over the place - so I have to add a manual style-sheet to get the padding and spacing right, which is crap (image above is without extra stylesheet). So I'm not saying it's perfect or easy, but I think it is possible.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- yapcguy 13y ago
  I take it your software is cross-platform. What language (C++, Mono?) and GUI library (GTK 2/3, QT?) are you using? Thanks.
  - berkut 13y ago
    C++ and Qt.
mrich 13y ago
You do realize that the majority of the smartphones in the world run Linux?
- pbsdp 13y ago
  The kernel. Everything else from libc on up was rewritten, and under Google's control. The Play store is hardly in AOSP, much less their new IntelliJ-based development stack.
  - joezydeco 13y ago
    The Play Store along with all the other Google Experience apps like gMail and Maps is not in AOSP. Google has no obligation to open-source those, nor do they want to.
  - archivator 13y ago
    The tools are publicly developed: https://android.googlesource.com/platform/tools/build https://android.googlesource.com/platform/tools/build (there are also two adt repos, one for eclipse, one for idea; gerrit is also public) Google may develop a lot of things behind closed doors but let's give them credit where credit's due.
dman 13y ago
Use something like python and qt and you are well set by any standards.
- berkut 13y ago
  Just use Qt. Works brilliantly, great API and documentation, and gets you 95% of the way to Windows versions and 85% of the way on OS X too. On OS X you'll have issues with native painting within OpenGL drawing and maybe event throttling / reordering for mouse / pen tablet events that you have to install a manual event filter for to fix, as OS X doesn't always send input mouse/keyboard events in the correct order.
  - pbsdp 13y ago
    Nobody on OS X wants a Qt app. If you have any solid competition in the market from a company willing to produce a native app, you'll lose to them. No wonder you're having issues on OS X.
    - MatthewPhillips 13y ago
      Not all customers are design snobs. Some buy things because it does the task well.
      - veeti 13y ago
        A better user interface _is_ "doing the task well". Functionality and design are not exclusive from each other.
        MatthewPhillips 13y ago
        There's a massive amount of software that exists outside of note-taking apps where the customer will be more than happy to put up with different-looking buttons because the value the software provides is so high. There are many software categories where visual-design decisions are not the only competition advantage.
Mikeb85 13y ago
It's not that bad. And if you're really concerned, you can just use the JVM.

by pbsdp 13y ago

drivebyacct2 13y ago

That's the biggest load of absurd shit I've ever heard.

berkut 13y ago

What rubbish. Any specifics, or are you just trolling? The company I work for develops high-end desktop software for Linux, Mac and Windows, and Linux generally causes us the least trouble and OS X (thanks mostly to atrocious graphics drivers and OpenGL support in addition to really bad memory allocation/paging issues that have only just been fixed in Mountain Lion) the most trouble. And this is on limited numbers of hardware and software variations for OS X.

kabdib 13y ago
What versions of Linux do you target?
- berkut 13y ago
  We "officially support" RHEL 5.4 and RHEL 6.0 (and thus corresponding CentOSes). But we've got customers running everything from RHEL 4.5 to the latest and greatest Ubuntus, Mints and Arch. All with the same binary installers. The only linux-related weirdness I can recall in the last two years distro-wise was Scientific Linux, which seemed to have some weird XOrg config issues.
  - kabdib 13y ago
    Thank you. Like others, I had no idea that Linux was that stable in the practical levels above its ABI.
  - pbsdp 13y ago
    > All with the same binary installers. So you integrate with the user's desktop environment, using standard local widgets, theming, integration with UX guidelines, local library dependencies, etc? Or are you shipping a Qt app with your own dependencies included? If so, Qt is pretty notoriously buggy on OS X (and rightfully disliked by most users as it stands outside all platform conventions), perhaps explaining some of your complaints.
    - berkut 13y ago
      Local widgets & theming yes, although generally we ship with our own themes by default as we make VFX apps, and the last thing artists want is bright UI to distract them. I don't believe there are general UX guidelines for Linuxes, but for things like notification popups, system tray stuff, yeah, we do all that natively to the distro through Qt (DBus handles all that transparently within Qt very nicely). We ship Qt as shared libs with the binaries and all dependencies we need system-wise statically - i.e. zlib, libpng, libjpeg are statically linked. For things like embedded Python, we have to do the same on OS X anyway, due to different python and zlib versions per OS X version. As for Qt and OS X regarding nativeness - I keep hearing this, but I never see any good examples. I agree it's possible to create Qt Apps on OS X that looks crap, but it's also possible to make them look native as far as I'm concerned. The only thing I can remember not being able to easily do in Qt regarding OS X widgets is the horizontal grouping of side-by-side buttons in radio-button fashion. But it's easy enough to knock up a QWidget subclass which replicates this. But admittedly I don't think I've tried to replicate every possible OS X control/widget... I think what might be the most difficult part of making a Qt app on OS X look native is the layout and spacing stuff, which generally does seem to be a bit crap within Qt on OS X. I can have the same code to do a side-panel with edit values in a panel, and it looks great on Linux and Windows: http://imgur.com/kUI90ry http://imgur.com/kUI90ry on OS X: http://imgur.com/yqigBdw http://imgur.com/yqigBdw and the spacing and padding is all over the place - so I have to add a manual style-sheet to get the padding and spacing right, which is crap (image above is without extra stylesheet). So I'm not saying it's perfect or easy, but I think it is possible.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
yapcguy 13y ago
I take it your software is cross-platform. What language (C++, Mono?) and GUI library (GTK 2/3, QT?) are you using? Thanks.
- berkut 13y ago
  C++ and Qt.

mrich 13y ago

You do realize that the majority of the smartphones in the world run Linux?

pbsdp 13y ago
The kernel. Everything else from libc on up was rewritten, and under Google's control. The Play store is hardly in AOSP, much less their new IntelliJ-based development stack.
- joezydeco 13y ago
  The Play Store along with all the other Google Experience apps like gMail and Maps is not in AOSP. Google has no obligation to open-source those, nor do they want to.
- archivator 13y ago
  The tools are publicly developed: https://android.googlesource.com/platform/tools/build https://android.googlesource.com/platform/tools/build (there are also two adt repos, one for eclipse, one for idea; gerrit is also public) Google may develop a lot of things behind closed doors but let's give them credit where credit's due.

dman 13y ago

Use something like python and qt and you are well set by any standards.

berkut 13y ago
Just use Qt. Works brilliantly, great API and documentation, and gets you 95% of the way to Windows versions and 85% of the way on OS X too. On OS X you'll have issues with native painting within OpenGL drawing and maybe event throttling / reordering for mouse / pen tablet events that you have to install a manual event filter for to fix, as OS X doesn't always send input mouse/keyboard events in the correct order.
- pbsdp 13y ago
  Nobody on OS X wants a Qt app. If you have any solid competition in the market from a company willing to produce a native app, you'll lose to them. No wonder you're having issues on OS X.
  - MatthewPhillips 13y ago
    Not all customers are design snobs. Some buy things because it does the task well.
    - veeti 13y ago
      A better user interface _is_ "doing the task well". Functionality and design are not exclusive from each other.
      - MatthewPhillips 13y ago
        There's a massive amount of software that exists outside of note-taking apps where the customer will be more than happy to put up with different-looking buttons because the value the software provides is so high. There are many software categories where visual-design decisions are not the only competition advantage.

Mikeb85 13y ago

It's not that bad. And if you're really concerned, you can just use the JVM.