Trying to discover new/unheard Linux desktop programs (Sorry for the confusion).
Edit: I apologise for confusing a lot of people. I meant Linux desktop “programs” coming from Windows/Mac. I’m used to calling them “apps”.
Edit: 🙌 I’m overwhelmed with the great “programs” people have recommended in the comment section. Thank you guys.
Because you asked about “apps”, people are replying with mobile apps. I think you wanted to write “programs” considering the community. Maybe you should edit this
“Apps” has been common terminology among macOS users for ages. On Windows, apps used to be called programs, until Microsoft changed with the time in Windows 10 and just started using apps like everyone else.
There’s no distinction between an app, an application, or a program. Same thing, different name.
That makes sense. Maybe I’m just old but they are called as programs since punched cards, as well as on Unix, Linux, Windows (until recently apparently).
Not exactly sure but I think the term “application >> apps” started with mobile phones. So, to me they are different. At least that evokes this meaning in my mind. It seems not with younger people though.
Go search Usenet posts from the 80s. We’ve used the short term “app” for “application” for goddamn forever.
It seems I’m not that old and apparently it first appeared around between 50’s and 60’s as a term. I assume it’s only used among programmers back then (until Apple, approximately late 80’s). Though it was not so common as today I guess.
I would assume that “application” (or its short form “app”) implies some kind of GUI.
I would say apps are software run with a runtime (PortableApps, Android apps, Windows Apps) while software runs by itself.
Another interpretation could be “little (software) tools”. I assumed with “apps” you wanted some shell tools.
Very little software runs by itself. You’ll need at least some form of libc to get the code running. Then there’s the graphics stack, where you need a runtime consisting of drivers, compositors, and all kinds of supporting software before you get even a pixel on the screen. It’s all APIs upon APIs upon drivers upon kernels. Even a command line tools needs a terminal emulator device to do any meaningful work these days.
Windows “apps” can be hidden browser frames or native C++ code and from look, feel, and behaviour, you wouldn’t notice the difference. iOS apps are basically just GUI programs, reusing many of the desktop toolkit in mobile form. Many “apps” built in frameworks like Flutter will take a Vulkan/GL context from the OS and do all GUI rendering directly, making them lower level programs than most OpenTK/Win32/Cacao applications.
I once made the distinction between apps and programs, but I realised every dividing line I could think of is rather arbitrary. The best I can think of is separating native code (C++. Rust) from JIT code (Python, Java) but even that distinction is starting to become blurry with JIT tookits being AOT compiled and C++ code being compiled into bytecode through things like webassembly.
I mean, i’m a software developer too. I just sometines forget all he context.
Hmm, thinking about it like that, the whole software stack has a similiar situation to the modern web: historical layers upon layers. Maybe we should sometime start from scratch, if the situation with vulnerabilities, reliability and brittleness becomes bad enough/gets more weigth.
Software is the antonym of hardware.
Generally speaking, all runtimes have been traditionally called programs. (On Unix systems runtimes are often synonymous to executables. I guess the term runtime is used more often by devs on the Windows and Java platform, and I think it is specifically an antonym of library, but not sure because I don’t develop on those often) Applications traditionally referred to programs that were exposed to the user through a mouse interaction by intention. On macOS an app has the .app extension and is thus a special type of a program.
Although, depending on the context, an “application” might just mean programs because even official tech manuals aren’t perfectly rigorous.
On Linux and Windows it is similar. They don’t have a specific extension (some .exe binaries on Windows are meant to be run through the commandline.)
Software is the antonym of hardware, as I wrote in another comment.
Honestly I’m surprised that people here don’t share this. The terminology was rather cleanly separated before iPhone. Unfortunately, due to smartphones the word “app” entered the mass population and it lost meaning as usual.
True but isn’t it safe to assume the OP meant desktop (considering the community)? There aren’t that many people using Linux phones.
I suppose since more than one response is related to mobile apps, it’s not a safe assumption that the OP intended for desktop apps/programs.
Considering the community, that’s what should happen. However sometimes people don’t realize which community they are in and they just look at the title. If the first person who replied started with mobile apps, others possibly didn’t notice because of them and continued adding up.
Guilty as charged. After reading the title it didn’t even cross my mind that it could possibly refer to anything other than mobile apps so I saw no reason whatsoever to look at what community it was posted in as the app I came to think of as a good recommendation is cross platform.
People started saying apps to programs on computer as well. No idea who’s fault it is. Apple’s? Only old people call it software or so.
Not exactly sure whose fault is this but if OP still wants to use the term “app”, they should at least mention it’s “desktop apps”, or just go with “programs” which is the proper term. Because even with “desktop apps” I still understand it is as web apps more likely.
Distrobox supports waydroid to use android apps on wayland. There are many small purpose built apps for android than can be useful on desktop.
No one seems to be mentioning apps in this specific kind of context, and I don’t consider a locked down and stripped orphan kernel to be “Linux” but a lot of this stuff it FOSS and can now run on both.