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by AsyncAwait 2738 days ago
a.) This is all very much WIP.

b.) As long as you develop a standard GTK app for Linux, it should be easy to adopt it for Librem 5.

c.) Are you seriously comparing their WIP docs to someone who has put billions of dollars and over a decade into their platform and has a JetBrains powered IDE?
2 comments
pjmlp 2738 days ago
a.) Fine, but they are runner ups on an well established market.

b.) What is the standard GTK way to access Linux desktop services like address book, NFC or Bluethooth LE?

c.) Yes I am, because that is what the large majority apps developers will be expecting to even loose a day of their income playing around with it.

I don't forget the corpses of OpenMoko, Maemo, Moblin , FirefoxOS. Even Jolla, Tizen and webOS aren't something that have managed to move the needle, in spite of the amount of money that has been wasted on them to this day.

So yeah, I am sceptical that it won't be yet another attempt joining them in a couple of years.

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AsyncAwait 2738 days ago
a.) Yes, which is why they're targeting enthusiasts first.

b.) When I am talking GTK, I mean GNOME here, as that's what the Librem 5 will run out of the box. There's all the APIs GNOME exposes for your dev pleasure + any other that you can utilize on standard desktop Linux, including bluetooth, contacts etc. [1] [2] [3].

c.) The majority of devs that are on iOS and Android, sure. but since there's plenty of Linux desktop applications already, I suspect the initial set of apps would be these, optimally ac customized to a mobile screen.

That'll give them a functional edge from their Android/iOS equivalents pretty much from the get go. which is also the major advantage of this effort compared to Ubuntu Touch/Firefox OS - the fact that if you're on Linux. you're already on the Librem 5.

d.) This is very much ideology-driven at this point. It is very important for efforts like this to exist. It probably won't ever be as big as Android/iOS, but it's important to do for the smartphone what Stallman set out to do in the 80s for computers. And few believed in him then. I don't see how "being skeptical" is furthering any cause.

I believe in a free, open-source, privacy-focused smartphone, in the post-Snowden age and an age where war on general-purpose computing is heating up. If this ships, even in less than ideal state, I'd welcome it with open arms. I realize that others may not be so inclined, but there must be people who push the boundaries in order to preserve free computing. I count myself among them.

1 - https://developer.gnome.org/references

2 - https://developer.gnome.org/gnome-bluetooth/3.20

3 - https://developer.gnome.org/libebook-contacts/3.10

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curt15 2738 days ago
Is GTK intended to be the programming environment aimed at typical developers? Writing object oriented code using lots of boilerplate C macros seems quite a bit more tedious than using a language designed for object oriented programming from the ground-up. At the very least will GTKmm be a first-class citizen?
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pksadiq 2738 days ago
> Writing object oriented code using lots of boilerplate C macros seems quite a bit more tedious ...

If you are not aware, recently (since GLib 2.44), the boilerplate code required in C is a lot less than it was required before. Say for example see app.c and app.h files at https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/tree/master/examples/appl...

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AsyncAwait 2738 days ago
There are GTK bindings for Python, JavaScript, Rust etc. It does not have to be C.

In fact it could be Qt too, that'll run perfectly fine too, if GTK isn't your thing.

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