this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2024
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The Linux Experiment recently interviewed the CEO who answered this question.
Basically it's the same as anything else. Linux requires more effort to code for due to its variety of distributions, and has a significantly smaller userbase.
In short, don't blame Proton, blame the (lack of) users.
I mean, can’t you just package your app in flatpack or even snap? Bam, your app works on 99% of distributions for little effort. That’s what Spotify does, and I’d argue they have even less incentive to support Linux than proton does
Spoken like someone who has never developed a app package
I don't know, I'm not a developer. Lots of companies don't make their products available on Linux, most cite similar reasoning, so it's unsurprising. But I agree it's disappointing. I really wish Linux was more user-friendly.
He also answered this claim, it is right for apps that aren't stuff like Proton VPN that can't work in a sandboxed environment. They are working on it iirc
Screw VPNs, give us everything else!
Well... A drive app will need to access the filesystem pretty in deep to support file syncing, whuch is harder to do on flatpak, their password manager is an extension so on linux too, and for the mail bridge app I think it's already on linux. Those are all the existing proton services
Sure, as long as you don't need any integration with other software, don't need arbitrary IPC, and actually keep some dependencies in line with some common denominator because there's only so much you can do with static linking (oh excuse me, distributing the shared libraries in the same package as your binaries as if it's a new thing) once it reach the "program must actually run" part.
Flatpack and every other similar solution that are described as "works everywhere" always come with a heck of limitations.
Thunderbird, MegaSync, Bitwarden all distribute as flatpak just fine, and it covers most of the functionality of proton suite.
Ironically the only two services this list doesn't cover, Proton VPN and Proton Bridge, are on flathub...
Last in checked email ain't all that complex, so seems like a good match
Variety of distributions doesn't affect the effort in coding, it adds overhead for package management. Only rarely does it require the developer to add some extra code for either an edge case or some specific library requirement.
On top of that, Flatpak and AppImage exist to solve this issue if you don't want to deal with it.
This is a pretty rich statement coming from Proton who has very publicly given out "private" info about its users to law enforcement without even so much as a hint of resistance. I doubt they would want to spend any resources on cross platform if they don't even back up their claim about true privacy.
Even zoom has a lazy script that packages their app in literally every possible format possible because it runs the exact same on every distro. It is not that hard. Literally the only way this doesn't work if you hired some 3rd party MSFT dev to create some insane C++ app with pure Windows API calls instead of using a library.
That's a bullshit excuse. Looks at Arch's AUR. Look at Gentoo's guru. What happens for proprietary stuff is a deb or rpm package is downloaded, extracted and files copies where they should be. That's it. And it works, because the cornerstone of the system is libc and the kernel. And these, for the overwhelming majority of applications, behave exactly the same on all distros.
I think the bigger issue is the variety of distros that end up not being compatible. Even if you overall have a lot of Linux users if they, for the sake of argument, distribute evenly between all distros then it's still a lot of effort to code. The only difference is that the argument will change from "Linux has a small userbase" to "Distribution X has a small userbase".
Linux doesn't just need more users to be worthwhile to develop for, it also needs a distro agnostic solution to run software. That or significantly reducing (or streamlining) the amount of distros so the developers would have far less configurations to account for.
Flatpaks and nix packages work on pretty much every distro.
That's why I mentioned both 🙂
Edit : okay yea i fd up guys anything to support women was only thinking of the slezzers
I don't want google to read emails from my doctor, or between me and my friend in a country that has an authoritarian government, or really anything. If you think you have nothing you need to keep out of the massive surveillance network most companies have become, you're mistaken.
Do you realize that right now there are US states trying to make publicly existing as a transgender person prosecutable as an obscene act? Or that there are states where abortion is illegal? I'm assuming you are american but that also applies to other countries. In Russia any public indication that one is LGBT is liable to get one persecuted by law and by bands of raging homophobes.
At the best of times this attitude "if you have done nothing wrong, you got nothing to hide" is naive. But these days, as the many flaws of the justice system and the raging bigotry of many people are transparent to see and widely commented on, it's downright clueless to say something like this.
you are right i didnt remember there are good people too
Is this satire '/s'?