[oblio]

There are some things we mourn. Nobody mourns cross platform distribution of native apps. Anyone who does hasn’t had to manage the insanity of installer apps and of papering over a million different OS versions and app versions.

It’s 2018 and we still don’t have a common, wide spread, OSS framework for self-updating native apps that runs on all the major desktop operating systems. And let’s not even go into app store territory...

[drb91]

The best native apps aren't cross platform. The worst native apps often are (at least from a mac perspective). We are simply moving to the lowest common denominator for all platforms, to the profit of business and the loss of the end-user. We can now develop software that is equally shitty for everyone much cheaper than we could before.

Is that the end of the world? No, of course not. But we aren't building better tools over time--for instance, google docs is distinctly worse than the word I used on macintosh back in the 90s for all the use cases I care about. So is pages! All this software is more complex, and generally for little benefit.

[ghettoimp]

I don't disagree that the best native apps are amazing. But it seems so wrong to regard a desire to build cross-platform software as some kind of scheme by developers against their users. In so many cases, being able to use a program/service on many platforms is a huge part of what makes it valuable to the end-user. You can get your gmail from your computer, or your phone, or from a web cafe, and have it all work the same. You can share google docs with anyone and know they'll be able to access them. You can decide you're fed up with windows/macos/android/ios and you want to switch to something else, and most of your software will still be there waiting for you on the other side...

[drb91]

> In so many cases, being able to use a program/service on many platforms is a huge part of what makes it valuable to the end-user.

Sure, some users, in some cases, may happen to use some features that are new. The pitch isn't "this is a good tool", it's "you have to use this tool to interact with others or retain data portability." Seems pretty user hostile to me.

[pjmlp]

Well it would be great if there weren't hundred of FOSS desktop variants....

[michaelmrose]

This seems to be a common complaint as if we were all standing on a life raft pushing it down with the collective weight of our respective keisters.

If only some people would stop contributing to creative work you don't see the value of and distributing it for free on the internet!

At present you have

Debian and a bazillion ubuntu derivatives using a debian package. ubuntu/debian are going to have different versions of some libraries but you can package deps with your app.

Arch and derivatives have a pkgbuild. This is quite simple if anyone cares about your app your arch users will probably upload one for you to the arch user repo.

Fedora and suse have rpms. These will be similar but not identical.

3 packages and you can cover most of your potential users.

In the future you reasonably may expect to be able to distribute a flatpak and be done with it.

[pjmlp]

It is not only about package formats, since even when the format is the same, the expected directory layouts or installed libraries will be completely different.

No one really took FHS seriously, each installation is a special snowflake with its own GUI and dynamic libraries story across Linux variants is even worse than it was on other OSes.

[kuschku]

There are only a handful you'd ever care about, and Qt apps work fine on all of them.

[weberc2]

But Qt itself is a dumpster fire. It just happens to be one of the least bad toolkits for Linux.

Disclaimer: My last job was Qt developer.

[michaelmrose]

The cross platform part is called source code. If all the chunks you use to build your app are cross platform packaging wont be horrible.

[oblio]

Quick example: to delivery safely my app with an web app, I need to add HTTPS and that's basically it. These days I can add Letsencrypt trivially.

With modern Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, I'm going to have to run around for ages figuring out how to sign my packages. Despite what you might say, it's never easy or pleasant.