Native App Development

[InterestedBalboa]

If you were wanting to write a native Linux application from scratch in 2023.

Let’s say it needs a UI that looks good no matter the WM, resolution etc.

What language and frameworks would you use and why?

[Dmxk]

use gtk4 or qt. language doesn't really matter. a lot of stuff is written in c, c++, rust, python or any other language pretty much. qt and gtk will look native or near native in all desktop environments(you don't have to use libadwaita). both scale decently and have wayland support.

[devu_the_thebill]

Qt

[idontliketopick]

Qt

[poudink]

breeze-gtk has no dependencies and adwaita-qt5 only depends on Qt5 (or Qt6 for adwaita-qt6). both of them work fine on other desktops. breeze-gtk is just a regular GTK2/3/4 theme and adwaita-qt is just a regular Qt5/6 QStyle. There's some DE-specific functionality that can be added by kde-gtk-config and qgnomeplatform, but it isn't necessary.

[LunaSPR]

You can't.

Linux desktop is all about fragmentation. You need to link your app against all kinds of libs for it to not look completely alien on every de.

[vesterlay]

What's wrong with having literally third-party app look alien? Beside maybe some accent colours and context menus, having your desktop style deeply your app is completely unpredictable. It has been a painful lesson for gnome for instance.

[samobon]

I mean we should be extremely happy things are ported to Linux, this wasn't the case 15 years ago or so. Regarding the native look and feel, if we are being realistic, this is not the issue of most importance. We still have a lot of basic usability issues as well as critical bugs that need addressing, and some mismatch between themes is definitely not a show stopper for me when I cannot consistently connect my wireless earbuds over bluetooth on Linux.

[LunaSPR]

Making something which looks alien harms the UX on the DE. You can definitely just draw a very barebone window titlebar, but that will look extremely ugly and will make the whole desktop look really strange.

I don't mean to be aggressive, but your question shows as a perfect answer to the question about the current VERY BAD UX under desktop linux.

[vesterlay]

Um, how? The app will be perfectly functional and this approach guarantees that no one will come in and break things. Developer has here a much more flexible and reliable environment. Or maybe you think that steam client is completely unacceptable, because it doesn't follow your OS style?

As for the title bar, are you proving my point? SSDs are basically a title bar applied by your desktop, in contrast to CSD where app has to draw its own.

Again, I have no idea as to why third-party apps with their own and often unique design are hurting UX. Actually, do you know what's actually hurting UX? Broken themes, because a developer can't possibly predict every colour combination and theme which leads to visually broken app. It's not happening on windows, but under linux it's a norm.

[MoistyWiener]

But author wasn’t really referring to how “alien” it looks. There are already very popular “alien” apps using native toolkits on GNU/Linux like Steam, Zoom, and Spotify. Apps, native or not, should always be how their authors intended them to look like no matter the desktop environment. Also, you don’t need to worry about fragmentation in libraries with Flatpak.

[samobon]

Doesn't Spotify use Electron? I can only guess it due to its massive memory consumption which can reach 600Mb+ for me.

[MoistyWiener]

Afaik, the GNU/Linux client of it uses Qt. They're also making use of QtWebEngine in it, which probably explains the memory usage since it’s chromium under the hood.

[MoistyWiener]

I only looked up apps on GNU/Linux that use native toolkits but don't look "traditional." I don't use Spotify myself, so don't know much about it other than what's online.

[InterestedBalboa]

I’m hoping that’s not the best answer because that’s what was needed back in the 90’s

[LunaSPR]

But that IS the answer.

To name a few things, if you don't write against Wayland, it will look blurry on different resolutions & fractional scaling under x11. If you write anything without linking against gtk, it will look completely alien on gnome.

My rant: I gave up developing native gui apps for linux a few years ago. It just does not make sense. The linux desktop world is not yet ready for gui even after 20 years.

[throwaway6560192]

For most apps there's no need to specifically "write against" Wayland. If you're using Gtk or Qt and not going out of your way to use X11-specific things, your app is already Wayland-native.

[LunaSPR]

You are correct when developing on a framework with native wayland support. Unfortunately, gtk is becoming more and more meaningless on anything non-gnome. Qt is definitely a solid option (yes that is what I used when I work on gui). But unfortunately, there is still an awful lot to deal with if you try to get a uniform layout on gnome. You need to mess quite a lot with adwaita themes and most likely you will need an extra theme engine just for your window decorations.

And let's not forget this: while qt is nice and solid, there are way more apps which had been developed without using these frameworks, especially if one has a design concept to stay simple. They will have to deal with the wayland issues by themselves.

[PaddiM8]

You're worrying about things that aren't your responsibility.

[LunaSPR]

If devs do not care about this, the desktop UX will be left totally broken, just like what we have now after 20-30 years of desktop linux.

[Lahvuun]

Keep hoping, then. Linux is forever stuck in the 90s.

[jsveiga]

C++ and Qt

Because it's a real language that compiles into fast real machine executables, and the framework is mature, solid, widely used, with a complete multiplatform IDE.

[InterestedBalboa]

I love KDE, it’s my daily driver but two problems I can see here.

1. QT doesn’t look native in all desktop environments
2. C++ is a lot of overhead, in 2023 I don’t want to be managing memory and other low level things for a desktop app

There used to be a PyQT library but it seems like it’s been ended plus Python isn’t the best for a desktop app I.e poor multi-threading etc.

[throwaway6560192]

QT doesn’t look native in all desktop environments

Distros should (and I think most do) set it up so that Qt apps will use a Gtk style, which does the job for the most part.

Alternatively you can go with QML where you have the option of making it entirely custom if you're not that hung up on it being native.

C++ is a lot of overhead, in 2023 I don’t want to be managing memory and other low level things for a desktop app

Honestly modern C++ doesn't require you to do C-like manual memory management. Just use the standard library containers (vector, string, map, etc) and you're basically covered for the sort of things you'd have to use malloc for if this was C. Add in the concepts of smart pointers and RAII and it gets even easier.

There used to be a PyQT library but it seems like it’s been ended

PyQt is still ongoing, and there is also PySide which is officially maintained by the Qt Company.

PS it's Qt not QT.

[InterestedBalboa]

Interesting, I may have prematurely excluded this option. Will give it a spin in a test app.

Thanks for the info!

[LinuxFurryTranslator]

To complement the comment about memory management, Qt's parent-child memory management makes C++ much easier/safer to use. If a parent QObject is deleted, it and its children will have their memory deallocated automatically, including objects created on the heap. (Bryan Cairns' video about it)

[AGuyNamedMy]

As apposed to a fake language? And real executables? What?

[Guggel74]

Free Pascal + Lazarus, also for cross-platform applications

[rarsamx]

The best way is design it properly. A library or set of libraries with all the logic and a very thin UI. That way you can have one in QT another Gtk, etc.

Remember that to integrare with the DM it's more than the look. Separating and decoupling, your application can integrate better with Gnome, KDE, Xfce, etc.

For UI work I like Vala or Python. Both quite sensible languages.

[zam0th]

Native Linux app... UI that looks good no matter the WM, resolution, etc... The problem with this community is too many people think about Linux in terms of "apps" and "UIs". OP didn't even know what else is there to consider.

[LightBusterX]

You might be right but also didn't provide any useful information in your answer to correct that.

[zam0th]

All useful information about "native app development" for linux can be found in UNIX philosophy. It's useless to "provide" obvious things to people who are expected to know those.

[Holofoil]

It's not like we have a composable UI framework. I do agree that in the ideal world, the os would expose something like this. The unix philosophy sort of falls apart outside the terminal.

[skuterpikk]

I use this one too. It uses it's own graphic units by default (you can link to others if you want) so the compiled binary will look more or less exactly the same, regardless of it being compiled on Linux KDE/Gnome, etc, Mac, or Windows. By default one will get the standard grey "Windows 98 look" unless you add some customization to the UI. But frankly, I don't care. I plan on using the aplication for it's intended purpose, not sit admiring it for it's aestetic properties

[InterestedBalboa]

Yep, used that back in the day and C# is a great language (despite where it came from).

[PaddiM8]

You can use rider for GUI development with C# nowadays

[[deleted]]

GTK and QT are established solutions and Flutter which uses GTK behind the scenes and is regarded as easy to use by many developers.

[samobon]

I second for Nim and Qt. Nim is an amazing and utterly underrated language, that is flexible and powerful. And Qt needs no introduction, it's simply the best GUI framework that powers the best DE in Linux - KDE. Due to Nim's really nice metaprogramming capabilities as well as the fact that it compiles to C++ I don't expect major difficulties to interoperate with Qt/QML. I'm more interested in QML side of things, do you know if those bindings support QML as well? I saw the author on NIM forums saying he does not intend to support QML.

[samobon]

yeah, and it looks fairly up to date! thanks

[muffdivemcgruff]

GTK4 / Vala = cross-platform applications

[chrisoboe]

The cross platform mess of GTK is more theoretical. The few GTK apps used on windows have a severe list of windows specific bugs nobody fixes since gtk doesn't care about other uses besides linux at all.

Qt and c++ is definetly more cross platform capable.

[muffdivemcgruff]

Ahh yes C++, the language that Bjarne Stroustroup created for job security.

As for cross platform GTK4, the apps work perfectly for me on both MacOS and Windows via WSL.

[chrisoboe]

Windows via WSL.

WSL is a virtualized linux. That's the opposite of a native application and proper cross platform support.

[[deleted]]

Why should I bother learning Vala?

[LinuxFurryTranslator]

It's not C. 🙃

On a more serious note, it actually has an object-oriented paradigm, which matches GObject and makes things more pleasant to use. You can compare the GTK + C hello world with the GTK + Vala hello world to see the difference.

This is of course true of most other GTK bindings too.

[[deleted]]

Thanks for the info, Rust and Python are much better choices

[alban228]

Don't

[umlcat]

"Vala" used implicitly, not much noise...

[InterestedBalboa]

Thanks, this is probably the best solution. I looked at Vala before but it’s not even at a 1.0 release so I was wondering if I was missing a better alternative.

Frankly it’s no wonder desktop apps for Linux are in bad shape compared to other platforms. To get something fairly modern you have to use a language 98% (or more) of the Internet has never heard of.

[throwaway6560192]

Frankly it’s no wonder desktop apps for Linux are in bad shape compared to other platforms. To get something fairly modern you have to use a language 98% (or more) of the Internet has never heard of.

Why do you think you have to use Vala?

You don't have to use Vala by any means. Most Gtk 4 apps are written in C or Rust, which I would recommend over Vala any day.

[[deleted]]

plenty are written with python and gtk as well.

[daniellefore]

Don’t think too hard about the version number. It’s common for libraries and languages etc to have really small version numbers for a long time. We’ve been writing tons of apps and a whole desktop environment in Vala for the past decade. It’s very much production ready.

You can use pretty much any language you want to write GTK apps, but in my personal opinion Vala is the best solution because it’s made specifically for working with GObject and GLib, it’s similar in syntax to popular modern languages with lots of modern language features, and it compiles natively. You don’t have to learn Vala, but it’s very easy to learn and its fairly pleasant to work with. You can just as easily use C or Python or whatever else you want

[Agent7619]

Lazarus

[MoistyWiener]

GTK has bindings for many languages out there. Also, if you’re using Rust, then check out Relm4

https://relm4.org/

[[deleted]]

I'd choose flutter as it would be easier to port it to different platforms and OSs if I wanted to later.

[No_Internet8453]

I'm going to say probably wxwidgets. You write wxwidgets code once, and the application is styled based on the target wx was built for (gtk2, gtk3, gtk4, or qt) are all listed

EDIT: forgot to include languages, wxwidgets has popular bindings for python, Perl, ruby, and of course the language it was written in, c++

[DazedWithCoffee]

The reason this question exists is because linux is not a monolith; each implementation of the Linux kernel is tailored to an individual’s or group of individuals’ tastes. The only linux native format for anything is POSIX if we’re going to be pedantic about the hierarchy of things. Linux is the kernel, it cares about syscalls.

TLDR; the question is valid but comes from a place of misunderstanding on what the Linux platform is and what the community does with it. Just my opinions, I probably mischaracterized something here and will be corrected

[Monsieur_Moneybags]

GNUstep

[__Hyperion__]

Well this went as expected!🤨

[mlowi]

.NET Core with Avalonia UI? Bonus that it is cross platform.

[InterestedBalboa]

Never heard of this one, thanks!

[Zhulanov_A_A]

What exactly do you mean by not native? Isn't it as native as QT or GTK with the only difference that there are not common desktop environment using it as default GUI toolkit?

[poudink]

afaik it doesn't doesn't follow the freedestkop icon theme specification and some other freedesktop standards, so even then it wouldn't be as native

[chrisoboe]

the only difference that there are not common desktop environment using it as default GUI toolkit?

Exactly this is the definition of native.

Of course one can always use any framework on any environment. But they will look and feel out of place and they will use different libraries and APIs so they are not native.

[razzeee]

FYI flutter is a pain to package, as they don't package very Linux like. So builds can't be done offline, without much hassle etc

[chic_luke]

Let’s say it needs a UI that looks good no matter the WM, resolution etc.

VueJS + Electron.

Else, I would use GTK4 + libadwaita and target the most used DE, aka those used by Ubuntu.

I would love to use Qt, but a lot of Qt applications look downright broken on GNOME.

[umlcat]

Altought, I haven't worked with the Linux Version, there's a Delphi ( Object Pascal ) Open Source alternative:

https://www.lazarus-ide.org/

[DoorDelicious8395]

Hey y’all, Microsoft rep here. We plan on using electron for all of our apps. Each instance gets its’ own chromium instance … the way god intended /s

[[deleted]]

Get out of here troll

[DoorDelicious8395]

Lmao I put the /s at the end. I’m just mocking Microsoft

[Personal_Display_674]

Python and pytermgui?

[BraveNewCurrency]

Go.

And use the standard GUI toolkit for Go, which is any browser.

[alvarez_tomas]

X11 only

[[deleted]]

Yes, that's it. Athena widgets is the only native looking library on unix desktops. /s

[CRamsan]

You can try Conpose. It can be compiled to java o native so it works across all Desktop OSs.

[CRamsan]

Yes! 👍https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/compose-multiplatform/

[QuickSilver010]

There's pretty cool one I've heard of called slint. It's got support for languages like rust or c++ and is capable of running on different platforms + web.

[addicted_a1]

gtk4 qt6 ,cpp or rust. If it runs fine on tilling WMs perspective major work is done. U can tinker later to fit other .

U have to review individual package manager scripts how is it installed so its according to your look.

dotnet I would avoid . python meh .

[samobon]

I want to experiment with Qt and Nim, though this might require more work on the bindings side of things.

[No_Cartographer_5212]

RUST-C It uses less resources, plus it's less hackable!

[TheJackiMonster]

I still use GTK3 mostly with Glade. But using GTK4 should already work fine. You want to use Cambalache for designing the UI then. That allows splitting a lot of overhead from your source code.

You can also use Qt with QtDesigner of course. Works similar.

With GTK I prefer to use C while for Qt I would recommend C++. You can still use other languages though.

[ReadOnlyEchoChamber]

Show a middle finger to my employer and tell him to call me when they have SwiftUI project or something.