Linux @lemmy.ml lemmyreader @lemmy.ml 10mo ago

Zed Decoded: Linux when? - Zed Blog

zed.dev Zed Decoded: Linux when? - Zed Blog

In this episode of Zed Decoded, Thorsten talks to Mikayla, who's been leading the effort to Zed working on Linux, about the Zed's Linux version and how it's taking shape

Linux @lemmy.ml Vincent @feddit.nl 10mo ago

Zed editor: Linux when?

zed.dev /blog/zed-decoded-linux-when

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28 comments

Somehow all these OSS projects that start with only a Mac client seem so suspicious to me...

I wonder if they will enforce a login to use the software?
- It's open source, and they already said they were Mac only because they used Metal for rendering. It's not suspicious for devs to use what they're most familiar with.
  
  because they used Metal for rendering
  
  That in itself is a suspicious choice tbh
- While I generally agree with your skeptical attitude toward this, I think the fact that they were targeting Apple's Metal graphics API to built the most performant possible IDE makes sense. You can't just snap your fingers and have a Linux graphical stack start working with your software.
  
  I think the reason they targeted macOS first is probably because many of the dev team uses Macs.
  
  As a Linux user, I'll happily wait for software like this to get ported to native Linux APIs so we get performant text editors instead of more Electron crap.
  
  As a die-hard Linux user, I understand that most of their devs probably used Macs. Sadly, they are likely not an outlier which means many ( most ) of their target customers are Mac users too.
  
  Overall, I applaud their focus and platform native approach. Let’s hope we get a decent Linux editor out of it at some point.
- They start with Mac clients because those devs use Macs.
- which one as well? it's the first project I know of that starts on mac
  
  how do you get to that? That would be funny.
  
  I was kinda referencing warp, a supposedly new terminal that was also written in Rust, had AI stuff, started on Mac, and finally got a Linux version, which lasted 30 seconds on my computer once I saw there is no option to use it unless you make an account. Yes. For a LOCAL terminal. Nuts.
I miss the point why they don't invested into Flatpak. I mean, with Flatpak they could've focus on make Zed works on the Flatpak platform and, as a consequence, it will be fine in every distro. The only thing that they should've be taking care is X11 and Wayland, but every other aspect to worry such as distro choice, QT/GTK, Gnome/KDE, etc would be vanished away
- They have not made a final decision on packaging it, in fact it's not even distributed at the moment, you need to compile it yourself. From what I've seen they will very likely package it as flatpak when it's out of alpha/beta
- Or just install with cargo, have it run unrestricted and still work everywhere. I dont think rust apps need to be flatpakked
That is really cool. I wish I'd read more of such posts on "how do we get there, how did we get here".

Most important answer:

After deciding to support Ubuntu and X11 and Wayland

I hope it'll work in distrobox such that you can run it on every platform
- That was a hypothetical illustrating the amount of choices one had to make to port to Linux. So far their decision is to just release a tarball.
- Distrobox is not a good solution. But when there is an APT package, packagers can easily use their binary and create RPMs etc.
  
  Why?
  
  I'd use it for analysis and prose. I think it'll be ok in distrobox.
FWIW I've been able to compile Zed for Wayland only by removing any X11 references in the code and I've been using it for about two months or so.

28 comments