Support Windows,macOS, Linux

[dnet890]

Hi
I know this app is still in very early stage. But, it will be wonderful if in the future this app support windows/macOS/Linux which will be first Lemmy client that support desktop OS and besides, flutter is multiplatform as well. what do you think?

https://docs.flutter.dev/get-started/install

[hjiangsu]

Definitely, I agree.

While technically, I think you can create builds for those platforms from the source currently without any issues, it's just not included in the releases because it would as more overhead (with testing, additional support, package compatibility,etc)

[hjiangsu]

Adding #38 here since it relates to this topic

[maxso-216]

I have tried to build on linux and it work.
However, there's a few problem. First, it required libsqlite3.so to run, which need to be installed separately. Second, as seen thought below picture, the layout is strange. Third, touchscreen scrolling does not work.
Still, your app is great!

[micahmo]

the layout is strange

With the new 2-column mode, it looks great on desktop. Runs well on Windows with a few quirks that we can address later.

[trymeouteh]

Would like to see this app released for desktop as well.

Instances would love it since it will reduce bandwidth usage from instances when using the app over a web browser when interacting with an instance.

Would like to see the app released in the following packages

• Linux
  • Flatpak
  • AppImage
  • Nix
• MacOS
  • Homebrew
  • DMG
• Windows
  • Scoop
  • EXE

[micahmo]

I love running Thunder on the desktop, so I think this would be great! Just fair warning, with the number of active contributors I'm not sure we will have the resources to distribute all of these releases (nevermind the additional maintenance of handling OS-specific bugs/features).

I'm not sure if this is something you'd feel comfortable doing, but if you clone the Thunder repo and install Flutter, you can build Thunder to run on your desktop OS by yourself. For example, I run this command to do a Windows build, and it works pretty well. flutter run -d windows --profile

The other thing I'd recommend, if you don't like using the default Lemmy web UI on your desktop, is to use one of the alternative frontends. I personally really like Photon.

Instances would love it since it will reduce bandwidth usage from instances when using the app over a web browser when interacting with an instance.

I'm curious why this would be true? Thunder makes API calls the same way the Lemmy web UI does.

[hjiangsu]

As @micahmo mentioned, I don't think we have enough active contributors at the moment to be able to support all of the different platforms you mentioned. Each platform comes with their own set of platform-specific challenges (as michamo can attest to 😅), so supporting all those platforms would have a significant toll on development of new features/fixing existing issues.

I am keeping this issue open because this is something I would like to explore in the future (if/when we get more contributors, or if the mobile versions are at a stable state)