back to article Go on, devs, have a Flutter on Linux desktop apps: Google and Canonical launch alpha SDK

Google has hauled in Canonical to help extend the search giant's Flutter development framework to support Linux desktop applications. Flutter, designed primarily for cross-platform mobile applications, is a UI toolkit which uses the Dart language. It has production support for Android and iOS, beta support for web applications …

  1. CAPS LOCK

    "Snapcraft is the app store for Linux" Oh is it?

    And here was me thinking it was a Canonical Trojan horse. Silly me...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Happy

      ... Trojan Horse

      Nice to see Mint has sent that particular horse to the knacker's yard.

      1. NATTtrash

        Re: ... Trojan Horse

        Let's all just hope that Canonical doesn't do anything silly, like for example declaring *buntu-core some kind of dependency, trying to hinder a quick sudo apt purge -y snapd...

  2. Robert Grant

    So close

    Flutter, designed primarily for cross-platform mobile applications, is a UI toolkit

    Cool. Cool!

    which uses the Dart language

    Oh.

    1. NetBlackOps

      Re: So close

      My reaction as well. I've literally lost count of the number of languages I've learned over the five decades in software engineering but it's become quite tiring to have someone come along and tell me about so "gooly, gee whiz" (proof right there how old I am) thing and then tell me I need to learn a new language. Rust? Makes sense. Dart? Ummm, no.

  3. Blackjack Silver badge

    Press F1 if you hate the Snap Store

    The Snap Store is one of the main reasons why I use Mint Instead.

    1. BenM 29 Silver badge
      Flame

      Re: Press F1 if you hate the Snap Store

      Yup. I hate the snap store.

      My personal bugbear is that Snap Store/Snap update, in its default configuration, does not like network proxies despite Ubuntu 20.04 apparently having a "system" network proxy setting. It's not like a network proxy is a surprise in OS utility terms (>20 years , to my knowledge, since they became a thing)

      <snip> rant about how much effort I needed to expend in order to make snap update/snapstore work on a proxied network and how much easier apt is to configure to use the proxy</snip>

      At least Windows only has two places you need to set the proxy to make sure everything works.....

  4. skierpage

    Canonical supporting Flutter is probably bad for Linux

    Flutter may be a good toolkit for Linux desktop apps, but tying it to Canonical's Snap store and allowing marketing garbage like "Snapcraft is the app store for Linux" is going to hurt it overall. GitHub issues like "flutter doesn't recognize applications installed through flatpak" don't inspire confidence that you can develop for Flutter with tools installed as flatpaks.

    For the end-user, if Flutter becomes successful it would be nice for Flutter to be available as a Flatpak runtime. But with Fedora having some control over Flathub and preferring Gnome, and Canonical participating in Flutter development for Linux, I don't see it happening any time soon. <sigh>

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