I’ve tried Lemoa: it’s truly atrocious to put it mildly. Besides, I couldn’t compile it on my GTK3 distro, there is no .deb, and using Flatpak means wasting hundreds of megabytes for what should be a simple, lightweight client. If I want to waste RAM, my browser is already running so I might as well use the web app from my instance.
I’ve tried Lemonade: the Python code doesn’t run (again, GTK4 dependencies), and the Flatpak doesn’t even display anything.
Liftoff is Flutter. No thanks…
NeonModem isn’t complete.
Servitor is command line. I love the command line, but that’s just the wrong environment for this.
Is there really nothing on Linux?
I’m surprised there isn’t a stable, real, lean client for Linux - or MacOS, or Windows. Lemmy has been around for what, 3 or 4 years now, and it’s not rocket science.
Web apps disguised as native programs and Android apps running in an emulator make no sense because the memory wastage means you’re better off opening another browser tab and running the real web app. Flatpak / Snap / AppImage apps are native clients, but make no sense either for the same reason. Unless the wasteful local client is so much better than the wasteful real in-browser app that it’s worth the memory expenditure of course.
Oh well, it works well enough in the browser I guess :)
Sure it’s been around for a while but almost no one was aware of it until around June 30th. It’ll happen eventually
In your post, you mentioned trying to compile a python app but not being able to due to GTK4 dependencies. That’s part of what Flatpak is trying to solve; dependency hell. Storage is so cheap now and it’s getting cheaper every year, you don’t think the few extra MBs are worth it?
Personally, I’d like it if most Linux apps were packaged as Flatpaks by their maintainers. It would let me try out more distros since I wouldn’t be missing any apps.
A few MBs eh?
Try a few HUNDRED megabytes.
Try to run a few small Flatpak-packaged apps at the same time, see how quickly you’ll bring the machine to swapping. Each app comes with its own version of the same libraries, desktop environment and whatnot, and running each in its own sandbox.
Sure it solves dependency hell, but it’s friggin’ crazy.
And no: I wasn’t trying to compile a Python program. Python is interpreted. But in this case, it needed GTK4 and I only have GTK3 installed. That’s fine, I could have installed the right libraries if I could have tried the Flatpak and figured the app was worth the effort. But the Flatpak distro didn’t even run. So… yeah, I’m not even gonna bother.
Fair enough.
Is it just a principle thing cause I feel like a king sitting on a throne of RAM right now 🤴. Your concern is going right over my crown.
I’m curious, do you leave apps open when not in use? What’s your use case like where using a containerized app becomes a problem? Admittedly, besides a raspberry pi, I don’t have a machine with less than 16 gigs of RAM so maybe it’s just that?
My bad, it’s late(early?) where I’m at
My machines are typical of today I guess. I have enough RAM and disk, but I also keep many things open because I have to. Like for work, I typically keep 2 VMs running, many terminals, tools of all kinds open, browser with many tabs open… And when I compile stuff, I don’t have 500M to throw at a stupid forum client.
Besides, I’m from a time when people laughed at X when it required 2M just to open an empty window. Now a simple BBS client requires the resources of an entire OS and nobody bats an eyelid. Like… really??
I have to commit that I initially thought you were just another out-of-principle anti-everything-new guy that we have quite a few in the FOSS space, buy you’re absolutely right it seems.
Thanks :)
My personal tragedy is that I’m really not anti-anything, I always try to be fair and honest in my assessments, and balanced in my opinions. Yet I know I always come across as an insufferable ungrateful know-it-all for some reason. I’m glad when someone manages to see past this.