Desktop App

[VincentRPS]

A "native" desktop app that doesn't require a web browser to run is basically a requirement for modern chat applications.

In Derailed's case, unlike some of our competitors (ehm... Discord,) I think we should aim for full support of the following operating systems:

• Windows (11, 10)
• MacOS (Sonoma-Monterey)
• Linux (Specifically support for a small but major subset of distributions including only Arch Linux, Debian, and Fedora officially.)

Derailed on Windows will be supported via an installer.

Derailed on MacOS will be supported via an installer.

Derailed on Linux will be supported with an installer, a Flatpak on the Flathub repository,deb for Debian-based operating systems, .tar.gz for "manual" installation, on the Arch User Repository, as a Snap, and a few other places as well probably because of how annoyingly decentralized applications and packages are on Linux.

The Desktop app will be built upon the same tools as our web app. As with our web app, the desktop app will share most of the code with our web app and use React and Vite. A stark difference however is that we will be replacing many JS-based parts in the web app and libraries with native Rust-built libraries and functions. And so this means that we'll of course be building the desktop app using Tauri. However, the estimated rollout date for this will be postponed as we are waiting for the upcoming release of Tauri v2.

Derailed always tries to be cutting-edge. We do try to use some of the most powerful, new, and utilitarian tools we can to give users the best and most performant experience when Derailed launches. Avoiding the bloat and stupidity of Electron and packaging Chromium and Node.js to a user is a good part of that. In the future, I hope to also migrate our web app and desktop app to Solid.js, which may even power our mobile apps in the future.