Canonical Continues To Talk Up Google's Flutter UI Toolkit

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Canonical Continues To Talk Up Google's Flutter UI Toolkit

Recently Ubuntu maker Canonical committed to using Google's Flutter user-interface toolkit as its "default choice" for their mobile and desktop applications moving forward. There is now an Ubuntu Blog post further detailing their interests in Flutter...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Canonical-Loves-Flutter

[kpedersen]

Widget titleSection = Container(
  padding: const EdgeInsets.all(32),
  child: Row(
    children: [
      Expanded(
        /*1*/
        child: Column(
          crossAxisAlignment: CrossAxisAlignment.start,
          children: [
            /*2*/
            Container(
              padding: const EdgeInsets.only(bottom: 8),
              child: Text(
                'Oeschinen Lake Campground',
                style: TextStyle(
                  fontWeight: FontWeight.bold,
                ),
              ),
            ),
            Text(
              'Kandersteg, Switzerland',
              style: TextStyle(
                color: Colors.grey[500],
              ),
            ),
          ],
        ),
      ),
      /*3*/
      Icon(
        Icons.star,
        color: Colors.red[500],
      ),
      Text('41'),
    ],
  ),
);

Do people find this particularly good to lay out 3 trivial components in a classic row / column container? Now don't get me wrong, even an ancient toolkit like Motif had its own issues but it seems to look elegant in comparison.

Not to mention the next task will be to bind the C++ code that people use to actually write software to sodding Dart. This is a very awkward workflow I must say.

Are there any flutter users here that have also used a standard GUI toolkit to compare against? It would be really interesting to hear why they like Flutter. I feel like I must be missing something!

[curfew]

While I've been let down by both Qt and GTK as toolkits and developer platforms, I just don't see how Flutter could succeed when it's alien to all the mainstream GUI platforms. The apps will look shit on Gnome, they will look shit on KDE and they look shit on everything else too.

[60Hz]

Why would any developer care about anything Canonical says or recommends? They've proven themselves time and time again to be completely incompetent.

[kvuj]

I wonder why they decided to choose Flutter. I doubt it's for performance, GTK4 has an excellent GL backend and a Vulkan experimental one.

Maybe customization? I heard it's quite easy to change how a Flutter app looks and Canonical has traditionally disliked GHI guidelines.

Cross platform? Wha... what? Are they planning on making their installer work as a Windows app too?

[t.s.]

Cross platform? Wha... what? Are they planning on making their installer work as a Windows app too?

I think cross platform is quite plausible, as we have a few gtk app on windows and macOS. And they plan to use flutter not only on their installer. The installer is just the beginning. Testing the water.

[t.s.]

While I've been let down by both Qt and GTK as toolkits and developer platforms, I just don't see how Flutter could succeed when it's alien to all the mainstream GUI platforms. The apps will look shit on Gnome, they will look shit on KDE and they look shit on everything else too.

Could you share whats the minuses of Qt toolkits? As i know, they're qute easy to use, and you can choose to separate UI/UX with logic, or half-combine that.

[chocolate]

Classic 2011+ Canonical, always trying to disrupt the Linux ecosystem, always making the wrong choice (except when backtracking).

There is even talk of future support for Universal Windows Platforms. Imagine deploying your Linux app to your Xbox.

Yep. That's a focus now.

[woprandi]

Widget titleSection = Container(
padding: const EdgeInsets.all(32),
child: Row(
children: [
Expanded(
/*1*/
child: Column(
crossAxisAlignment: CrossAxisAlignment.start,
children: [
/*2*/
Container(
padding: const EdgeInsets.only(bottom: 8),
child: Text(
'Oeschinen Lake Campground',
style: TextStyle(
fontWeight: FontWeight.bold,
),
),
),
Text(
'Kandersteg, Switzerland',
style: TextStyle(
color: Colors.grey[500],
),
),
],
),
),
/*3*/
Icon(
Icons.star,
color: Colors.red[500],
),
Text('41'),
],
),
);

Do people find this particularly good to lay out 3 trivial components in a classic row / column container? Now don't get me wrong, even an ancient toolkit like Motif had its own issues but it seems to look elegant in comparison.

Not to mention the next task will be to bind the C++ code that people use to actually write software to sodding Dart. This is a very awkward workflow I must say.

Are there any flutter users here that have also used a standard GUI toolkit to compare against? It would be really interesting to hear why they like Flutter. I feel like I must be missing something!

It's easy to understand with a unique file, and it's declarative.
I don't think that would be much simpler with Qt/GTK. Of course if you just count the lines......
Anyway you can't understand the potential of a toolkit with such a trivial example as this.

[re:fi.64]

I wonder why they decided to choose Flutter. I doubt it's for performance, GTK4 has an excellent GL backend and a Vulkan experimental one.

Maybe customization? I heard it's quite easy to change how a Flutter app works and Canonical has traditionally disliked GHI guidelines.

Cross platform? Wha... what? Are they planning on making their installer work as a Windows app too?

Flutter is just very easy to work with and add new widgets to, moreso than anything but Electron pretty much (and that of course has some pretty serious performance issues...).