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I dont want Flutter on Linux desktop because it will not integrate well. Flutter apps are almost certainly not going to use DBus, or other Freedesktop standards to fit in well, in the vast majority of cases. This isn't an inherent limitation, it's just that cross-platform apps generally tend to be lowest-common-denominator in nature. (It'll be interesting to see if Canonical/Ubuntu, in their adoption, do buck that trend & integrate well with Freedesktop systems.) I don't want Flutter apps because it's highly unlikely Flutter apps will visually integrate with my desktop. I can pick GTK and KDE themes, and a good number of apps will fit the look I have picked, but with Flutter, the power & control seems to lie in the app designers hands, not the users. So I have arguments against Flutter. I also don't like this article's arguments against Flutter. They seem shallow, petty, emotional, & highly non-technical. They seem like pointless griping. I worry the article is giving more credence to Flutter with it's shallow damning than it is dissuading anyone. They argue that Linux doesn't need another toolkit. This status-quo-ism feels very pro-Cathedral-ism, anti-Bazaar-ism. Free software should be hunting for better ways to do things. There being existing ways to do things is not a good argument against trying for other. The author argues Google does not have a good reputation maintaining software. They cite Google Glass and Google Play Music as examples. There's a lot of examples of Google ending support for things, true. Glass, I believe, is still sold to enterprises, and had a new hardware edition come out 2 years ago. This is hardly not supported. Google Play Music was migrated to a newer alternative application, and as a user of both, it's been, mostly, pretty decent a transition. In terms of the open source libraries they release on Github, generally they seem to be well supported & long lived. Google Guava has had it's 30th release. There's a vast number of projects that have been well supported for a really long time. |
On the plus side -removing the Linux-centric dependencies could potentially level the playing field for the BSDs. This would be a good thing because it would prevent Linux from becoming a Windows-style monoculture.
Meaning if Linux continues to go off into the weeds, then the BSD having a viable desktop that doesn't depend on the freedesktop foundation infrastructure will insure that desktop users aren't all left hanging (relying on windows or macos).