Google and Canonical Bring Flutter Apps To Linux and the Snap Store 22
An anonymous reader writes: Google is partnering with the Ubuntu Desktop team at Canonical to bring Linux support to its open source UI framework Flutter. Today's Linux alpha announcement also means Flutter developers can now deploy their apps to the Snap Store. Flutter group product manager Tim Sneath argues this is a big milestone because UI frameworks rarely become versatile and powerful enough for an operating system to depend on. He pointed to Windows being written in C++ rather than .NET, even for applets like the Calculator. Sneath also believes this shows Canonical is willing to invest in a first-class way to build apps for Linux, making Flutter on Linux an official part of Ubuntu. Additionally, enterprises can feel confident about picking Flutter -- it's more evidence of its longevity and technical excellence, Sneath said.
bahaha- longevity??!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Flutter alpha version released 3 years ago, first stable version 5 days ago.... longevity? enterprise? what the fuck are the marketing wanks smoking, who is going to swallow that bullshit?
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Just being a Google product puts its longevity in question. I'd be real careful about putting any development money behind depending on a Google platform. I mean, look at https://killedbygoogle.com/ [killedbygoogle.com]
I was surprised to find platforms that will die in the next year. I don't develop for it, but I've heard of AngularJS. Now it's dying?
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Familiar tactic (Score:2, Troll)
Q: How do you identify a slashvertisement?
A: It drops the name of a technology you've never heard of, in phrasing that takes it for granted everyone's familiar with it.
C++?? Windows ?? (Score:5, Insightful)
I fail to grasp how the fact that Microsoft writes apps in C++ for Windows rather than using .NET, relates to using Dart-based Flutter for writing apps on Ubuntu.
Snap is garbage (Score:4, Insightful)
Snap is for completely incompetent devs who can't seem to figure how to properly package things, let alone write a coherent set of libraries that have sane API design that doesn't lead to dependency hell.
What fucking moron insisted on making /snap a hardcoded path in the first place?
Re:Snap is garbage (Score:5, Insightful)
Snap is for closed-source projects that can't bother to support multiple distros. Using it for open source stuff is just perverse.
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...and snaps are a reasonable compromise to facilitate this.
I do not agree with that statement at all. In my opinion snaps are a blight and the worst possible way of achieving whatever it is Canonical wanted to achieve.
I'll be ignoring this because ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Google project longevity?? (Score:2, Insightful)
Who writes this stuff?
Now that there's a PR statement saying how great it is and it's the future and better than Windows in C++ (huh, what?), the clock is ticking. I give it 18 months TOPS before Google quietly posts a note on some unread "support" message board they're killing it in 30 days.
12 months is more likely but I'm going to be risk averse on this one and going with 18.
Thousands of apps incoming! (Score:2)
YES! (Score:2)
First, I love developing mobile apps in Flutter/Dart. The hot reload ability is super handy when you're tweaking layout. The toolkit isn't hard to learn and it was designed from the ground-up with responsive apps and async io in mind.
I'm super excited that they're still working on Flutter for desktop and for web. I'd love having the same code compile to Android, iOS, Web, Windows, macOS and Linux desktop. I'm thinking it might actually happen someday. The dream of Java finally realized... sorta.
This is
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Damn, if you aren't being paid to write that ad-speak blob, you should be.
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I had to chuckle about Microsoft being developer friendly. I remember being in college and not being able to do anything in windows (and DOS before it) because it had no developer tools. Cygwin wasn't really a thing yet and djgpp wasn't great. My older brother bought me MS's Visual C++ & Visual Java (to the tune of several hundreds of dollars) and I still couldn't do anything because neither one supported the standard language. (Visual Java was not Java. And what the hell is WinMain()?) Windows co
Snap is the first thing removed with my installer (Score:1)
Full cross-platform, like Electron etc. Nice. (Score:2)
In my opinion more ways for devs to build truly cross-platform apps is great, so this is great
Just wanted to mention that there is great commercial success at the moment doing similar with react-native and the electron framework, with examples being Spotify and Discord and Skype. You may have personal feelings and technical feelings about those specific apps but it's hard to argue they are not viable commercial successes
Also worth noting none of those rely on Linux packagers to get their job done. They are
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You know, you aren't supposed to eat any marketing executive for lunch and then come here.
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DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS
hahahah - your userid is low enough that should be a fun memory
No, but really, I'm just happy there are potentially two viable solutions in the ecosystem for full crossplatform. Hopefully there will be even more, it's clearly a need. And hopefully google doesn't stuff this one up and close it down in a year.
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Oh look, another cross-platform UI toolkit (Score:1)