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aversis_
stn_za
100% This.
Make desktop apps great again
Joel_Mckay
Note Qt5 is currently broken in some universe MATE desktop repos.
wxwidgets would likely be cleaner to maintain over the long-term, and seems more stable for event callbacks etc.
I'll admit some users like spelunking environment variables like QT_QPA_PLATFORM, and application specific python3-venv installs...
Sometimes a web SPA is just easier to avoid the whole mess of porting. =3
anthk
Install qt5ct and set
#!/bin/sh
export QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME=qt5ct
bbor
...why? I know this is the default opinion, but it's always seemed misplaced to me, even more so in 2024.
QT is run by a for-profit company ($QTCOM, TIL!) selling commercial licenses, Electron is maintained by OpenJS, who has it MIT-licensed all the way. QT uses a language that was designed in 1985 (literally 1-5y after GUIs first appeared) and Electron uses a language designed in 1995 (for the express purpose of modernized GUIs). QT stands alone on its monolithic rock, whereas Electron leverages Chromium and Node.js, two absolute powerhouses of free development and dependencies. Finally, and most importantly: the web is more beautiful and far more consistent than native-styled apps, and GUIs made whole-cloth from QT are almost always too ugly to even be in the running there. All of those downsides are worth it to save some RAM? Not even worth it, but worth lauding like it's a brave stance?
Sorry, just triggered my trauma from having to work in QT before I was able to find my true calling as a webslinger. No offense to the author of this particular app ofc, I'm sure it was the right choice for them and it looks well-executed for QT. ...Though if they used Electron, it could've been "Jocker" or "Tocker" (ts!) or "Chrocker" or "Electrocker" rather than "cock-er", but that's neither here nor there.
stn_za
The argument is not so much for QT as it is against electron/web crap masquerading as desktop applications.
replete
Docker Desktop uses 130MB RAM for me on MacOS. I'm guessing the app is using a system webview rather than bundled chromium/electron, which is the right thing to do given how simple the UI is.
pjmlp
Same here, kudos for using Qt.
hyperbolablabla
Can't believe we live in a timeline when using Qt is laudible
ktm5j
What's wrong with Qt?! I love it. KDE has long been my desktop of choice and Qt is my go to GUI framework for application development.
Qt Creator makes it so easy to whip together a UI that you can easily write code for. It's an absolute pleasure compared to alternatives (at least the ones that I've tried).
1oooqooq
i exclusively contribute non UI stuff to kde because i could never get the hang of qt.
I'm a weird contributor tho. i only focus hard on one annoyance for a couple hours and convince myself i can code a solution by just looking at the project code... it mostly works but not for kde apps UI.
it doesn't help either that qt (or maybe its a kde thing) keep changing the base ui code. qml, designer, widgets... it's a dozen frameworks instead of one. not to mention most apps are usually in a mixed abandoned-migration state.
well, they just green ligthed a goal to make kde app writting easier. hopefully we will get a one stop place to read how to accomplish things.
manojlds
Missed saying "Looks cute"
martinbaun
I wonder how you pronounce that name :D
bityard
It's impressive what Python+Qt can do in just a few hundred lines of code.
That said, it's pretty weird that they are just running the `docker` command directly and "manually" parsing the output instead of just calling docker-py, which has been around forever: https://github.com/docker/docker-py
xlmnxp
my main reason to use CLI instead of SDK is to support Podman and second reason is to make the project simple and easy to contribute :)
cacois
very good call on podman support - it didn't immediately occur to me but that's an obvious reason for this choice.
strunz
Also lazydocker seems far superior
nubinetwork
Based on the screenshot, I'm not sure if this supports docker compose... it might be nice to be able to create new containers from scratch using the UI if I'm using it for managing running containers.
dusted
Wow. This is actually very very good. It's the best UI for docker I've seen so far. It's also very fast. I'll be using this from now on. Thanks!
leonheld
I'm very fond of short projects like these that provide significant value. A couple hours and 500-something lines is all it took to make some of us happy.
Super cool!
hodanli
Excuse me for my naive question, but why don't we use native Docker Desktop? What are the advantages of this tool?
drpossum
Docker Desktop has different and obnoxious licensing requirements. If you are using Desktop and are unaware of them, you absolutely should be especially if you work for any company of meaningful size.
djbusby
What's the obnoxious part of their desktop license? It just that one has to pay or what? They even have a carve-out for small business.
MajimasEyepatch
This part includes most serious technology businesses that have made it past the early stages:
> Docker Desktop is free for small businesses (fewer than 250 employees AND less than $10 million in annual revenue), personal use, education, and non-commercial open source projects.
That sort of license requirement on an otherwise free tool makes it easy for employees to accidentally install software that their employer is then on the hook for. In addition, Docker Desktop was available for free for years, and they only introduced the new license a few years ago, so a lot of people still have a bad taste in their mouths from having to migrate their whole team off of it. It's not unreasonable to charge money for this software, but charging money without having a way for people to explicitly opt in is tricky at best, even if they don't have bad intentions. (And speaking of bad intentions, ask any engineering or IT manager how it feels to wake up to a threatening email from Oracle because they detected that someone somewhere in your company used a product that requires a license, and the terms of their license require that you pay for every single employee at your company.)
I imagine some people also have problems with charging for software that is built on top of FOSS, but I am not especially ideological about that and I assume that Docker is at least obeying the letter, if not the spirit, of the relevant licenses.
sn0wtrooper
At least for me, when I installed the Docker Desktop for Linux once, the docker daemon would not run again if the Docker Desktop was not running.
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ddtaylor
May I ask why people are using these desktop apps instead of Portainer and other web interfaces that run inside docker?
__jonas
Not a direct answer, but for me, lazydocker (TUI) is the best possible solution for this sort of thing
- Don't need to have another service running in the background constantly, using up server resources
- Don't need to expose another service including authentication on the server like with a web interface, can just use it via SSH
- Works locally the exact same way as on a remote machine, unlike some desktop GUIs
- A nice, live, interactive overview of all running containers and their logs unlike with the docker CLI (I find the output of `docker ps` impossible to read, it ALWAYS wraps the output for each container across two lines in my terminal and I can't tell how the values line up)
mrweasel
Because I mostly don't like web interfaces. It's not that Portainer is bad, it's not, it's really good actually, but I like software to show up as their own thing when I tab between windows.
I don't want yet another tab in my browser, I also don't use webmail, web based chat clients, IDEs, newsreaders and so on. I'm mostly okay with Electron apps, if their done right (VSCode and 1Password comes to mind a two really good examples).
maxloh
Rancher Desktop is a good alternative that properly set up a docker installation on Windows for you.
johnchristopher
Can qt use break lines in cells ? It'd be easier to parse info.
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Looks pretty nice. I love to see a real desktop app (using Qt) instead of yet another shitty Electron app. Hope that you keep working on this!