cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/26724528
Announcing the Blorp Mac App Preview – Available to Test Now!
Blorp is at a stage where there's still plenty of work to do, but I’m ready to start gathering feedback. The main areas that need improvement are enhancing the post creation experience and adding the ability to sign up directly through Blorp.
That said, Blorp is already very usable. I’ve chosen to launch the Mac app first because, among all the Lemmy clients, the desktop space is the least saturated. I’m starting with Mac since that’s where I’ve done all my testing, but the plan is to expand to Linux and Windows as well.
I’d love for you to download Blorp for Mac! If you’re not ready to install it yet, or you're not on a mac but still want to check it out, you can use the web version at blorpblorp.xyz.
Did I mention, Blorp is open source? You can read all the code on our GitHub.
Other platforms coming soon:
- iOS
- Android
- Linux
- Windows
Will the Linux version be available as a Flatpak?
Tbh, I have no idea how Linux works. But I’m looking at some documention and I don’t see why Flatpak wouldn’t be possible.
Personally, my main Linux usage so far has been the Steam Deck, which uses an immutable version of Arch Linux on which Flatpaks are the primary means of software installation.
The other main multi-distribution package formats seem to be Snaps and AppImages. AppImages seem to work anywhere, due to being self-contained, while Snaps have a dependency that appears to make them a viable alternative to flatpaks on systems other than the Steam Deck, which can't easily make use of Snaps due to the immutability of SteamOS. There's also Nix packages, though they don't seem to be as prevalent as the other three.
Otherwise, most major Linux distributions also have their own native package formats, such as Deb packages for Debian and Ubuntu, Pacman for Arch Linux, and RPM for Red Hat and Fedora.
Not sure how difficult it is to maintain different Linux packages types for a program, but thanks for your effort to bring Blorp to Linux!
It’s probably not super difficult. It’s mainly that cutting new releases for too many platforms might be tedious. But as I settle on a stable release that meets most people’s needs, I’ll be more interested in pushing to more platforms.
That being said, I’m mainly looking for high quality beta testers atm. If you were really enthusiastic about this over other Lemmy apps, that would make me more likely to look into Flatpak soon.
But if it’s more like “its interesting but not for me,” then I’ll likely wait