Taking your ideas for my next linux app
Taking your ideas for my next linux app
I'm bored and want to practice my Rust skills. I am the creator of open-tv. If you have any idea for a linux desktop app, even if it seems quite complex, I will take it.
I'd like to see a simple, dependency-free, calculator app, written in Rust, using egui. All other GUI calculator apps I've seen so far are unnecessarily heavy, using bloated toolkits like GTK or Qt.
This would be handy for those run a GTK/Qt-free environment, and/or those who just want a tiny calculator app (optimised for the smallest binary size) without any external dependencies. Preferably even compiled using musl, to remove any glibc dependencies - resulting in a simple, small, portable binary that can run on any distro and doesn't even need to be installed.
Eventually, I would like to see this idea expanded to other apps - such as a simple text editor, a simple image editor, and maybe even a simple and lightweight web browser using Servo.
Idea 1
I've been looking for a journal/to-do/checklist app that isn't completely thumb chewing stupid. I've yet to find anything as good, flexible and feature complete as what you'd get on PalmOS devices in the early 2000s.
I often use my journal for brainstorming and planning, and basically the best I can do is bulleted lists. I would like a checklist section that can do things like recurring tasks, one-off tasks, daily tasks, and persistent tasks. (Daily tasks: Feed cat. Each day it puts a task with that name in the Tasks window for you to check off. Persistent tasks: Fix the kitchen drawer. This same task remains in the Tasks window until it is checked off, and then stops appearing.) I would also like "take 5 loads of yard debris to the road 0/5" and be able to click to advance it to 1/5. Marry this with a journal app so that you can keep track of progress on stuff like fitness goals or whatever.
And please. Even if it is stored as human-readable markup, please. PLEASE. Let the user edit it in rich text mode. Too many of the "journal" apps out there require you to edit in markdown mode and then you can switch to a "view" mode to see what you've done. Also: Don't be that guy whose app cannot be themed. I don't want some light mode Gnome lookin' bullshit in the middle of my dark mode Cinnamon.
Idea 2
Do a fully local fitness tracker. Apple/Google/Samsung health apps are there primarily to invade your privacy and no one should ever use them. I get that this one is more useful as a mobile app running on a device with MEMS sensors, possibly rigged to a smart watch with biometric sensors, and there is no such thing operational in the GNU/Linux world, but still it might get some use.
Idea 3
You asked for it: Woodworking CAD. This "seems quite complex." The best workflow I can find is in FreeCAD, which is too complex and cumbersome for the job. It's a general purpose engineering CAD system and it's designed to work in abstract absolutes; you can't think in terms of "put a mortise and tenon joint here" you have to think "create a sketch on this face and constrain a rectangle to this edge with these dimensions." And then it doesn't give you things like automatic cut schedules, materials lists, templates. FreeCAD is allegedly extensible, it is allegedly possible to create your own workbench to add more specific features. I even tried. There is no documentation, they didn't write down what they were doing as they were doing it, so...I'm not sure why they bother at this point.
I've been interested in a CAD package that works the way a woodworker works. I've thought about trying to implement this in the Godot game engine, but even then the project strikes me as "monumental."
Afaik, there is no app to very easily generate GIFs.
- select images
- select duration
- select quality / size
- generate gif (avif?)
plus:
- optimized for smartphones
There is switcheroo which makes image conversion easily. It converts to gif as well but only 1 image to 1 gif, not 2 images to 1 gif.
It should be straight forward since image magick contains all neccessary commands for gif creation
Implement a wireless file transfer protocol that works with Apple's Airdrop and Android's Quick Share.
In other words Airdrop for Linux that works with both iOS and Android.
- Create a software tool with UI that allows syncing of a phone with Linux to copy over photos, documents, music etc.
Must work with ios and android
What about a fully featured PDF tool (page deletion, blank page instertion, OCR, edition, conversion, cropping, reorientation, etc...). This is a very missing feature of the linux world, we always have to jump from one software to another. An alternative would be to build the plugins of Okular to allow to make these operations.
Obsidian clone thats better than logseq
Do you know what really doesn't exist?
A pure, HTML only, WYSIWYG text editor. Every text editor out there is either XML, JSON or Markdown based. HTML is the most widely adopted standard ever and is the best for storing content long term. People could write CSS themes, you could even add paged media support.
@Fredol a simple, clean-looking GTK4 client for Syncthing.
Voice assistant that allows to perform common tasks like setting up calendar events, sending emails, opening apps, etc. Bonus points for "connect to server abc" and the assistant would open the terminal and ssh to abc server.
A backup and restore utility which allows me to export/restore system settings and installed apps. This would make a reinstalll much less time consuming and allow installs of the same configuration on other computers.
I desperately want a simple GUI for setting the sample and bit rates for my audio input device. Mine is a Focusrite 2i2 gen 3, but there should be a fairly universal way to do this in Pipewire.
A simple intuitive whitelist/blacklist firewall with logging for both inputs and outputs. I shouldn't have to navigate NFT's complexity or write scripts simply to list all the websites I'm willing or unwilling to connect to and their port number. There are silly limitations on all the tools I've tried.
I use a whitelist because my code sucks, and PDF datasheets for hobbyist hardware projects can be super sketchy to download. I have somewhere around 600 entries on my list. It feels like an intentionally obfuscated/overcomplicated issue in OpenWRT and elsewhere from a user's perspective.
I really don't trust local LLM's overall now that they've been shown to have hidden vulnerabilities and would love to have an easier way to monitor an outputs log and sandbox really.
How about a doc editor, not code editor, not m$ word. Just a simple modern doc editor.
We really don't have a native asciidoc editor, not even one. Unlike other apps which we don't use it frequently that even electron liked apps' performance are acceptable, doc editor should be built in native.
We have something like https://www.appflowy.io/ and https://www.getgrist.com/, but none of them are native.
A gtk app for YouTube and/or twitch intended for media PCs would be neat, with controller/remote support and ui optimization for air mice.
I don't like the ux of kodi very much and trying to get it to play YouTube has been a nightmare 😅 a simple app with a decent user interface would be very welcome
There's a big lack of a decent RC airplane simulator on Linux. One that you can plug a transmitter in via USB or Bluetooth and go from there. Real flight is the king but it's Windows only.
Clozemaster-style spaced repetition app for languages. It reads a sentence with text to speech, you have to fill in the blank with your target language. Translation can be shown if you're stuck, and you can turn on hints when typing. It shows the words based on the SM-2 algorithm or similar
A gui app that lets you:
- symmetrically encrypt and decrypt text and files with AES-256 and without any weird formating that would make it incompatible with openssl.
- generate (without writing to file) RSA-(2048-4096) keys and asymmetrically encrypt, decrypt, sign and verify text and files.
It should be simple without any advanced options or storing any data or credentials or saving anything without asking the user. For example;
For symmetric text:
- 3 text boxes, 1 for input, 1 for output, 1 for password, encrypt/decrypt radio, 1 button.
For symmetric file:
- file picker, 1 password text box, encrypt/decrypt radio, 1 button
For asymmetric generation:
- 2 text boxes, 1 for priv key, 1 for pub key, 1 button.
For asymmetric text:
- 3 text boxes, 1 for input, 1 for output, 1 for priv/pub key, encrypt/decrypt/sign/verify radio, 1 button
For asymmetric file:
- file picker, 1 priv/pub key text box, encrypt/decrypt/sign/verify radio, 1 button
There is an app called Rethink DNS for android. It is a DNS filter by Mozilla guys. It can also show the DNS queries generated through the system. One can block certain apps, exclude certain app from DNS filtering. It has wireguard support, that means can route certain apps through proxy. It has to be the bast app I ever downloaded. Please can you make something like this for Linux.
If anyone knows an existing alternative please comment. (On arch based distro.)
A graphical SSH client similar to Termius
A gui for a tunneling solution such as rathole or FRP.
A basic, local text-to-speech app using home assistant's piper would be great. Feed it a document and have it read the document to you, highlighting along the way.
I wrote a version of this in Python a few years ago, but it depended on external tools like ffmpeg to work, limiting its portability. The Python requirement was also a major factor for adoption.
If it were ported to Rust, doing the (de)serialisation internally, I believe that it could have far-reaching implications on how we share and consume news:
https://danielquinn.github.io/aletheia/
If you're interested, I presented the Python version at PyCon UK a while back.
An open-source Resilio Sync alternative (not syncthing) that centers around the folder represented by unique hash, without any device management
A speech-to-text / dictation system geared towards writing documentation.
screen2gif. Peek is really good on the capturing side but it lacks all the editing tools like resizing, changing speed of each frame, removing specific or ranges of frames, inserting frames, drawing on frames, and of course exporting in different formats with very good compression options. I really miss being able to fine tune my gifs without having to open multiple tools or scripts.
Sticky notes, but they accept markdown and mermaid syntax
Option 2: a Windows XP Paint clone. Seriously, all the paint clones you can get on Linux, like gnome paint, just don't work properly
1 Custom GLIBC locale configurator
Pick date format, time format, currency I'm currently using a weird combination of English, German, and Danish and it still doesn't fully do what I want (time is separated with a dot)
2 System hosts manager
Search, detect conflicts or other issues and add new items.
3 XCompose manager
I made something like this myself some time ago but it uses the outdated GTKSharp library and misses several features such as conflict detection. https://github.com/QazCetelic/Composition
4 Package manager
This might be a bit complicated, but it would be really neat to have an app to manage packages that doesn't freeze, crash or fail.
5 Port your app to tauri
I saw you're using Electron, you could port it to Tauri https://tauri.app/
Maybe a Linux-native Lemmy app? Or a client for Mastodon? Pixelfed, PeerTube?
Or a GUI for the Rust-based rescrobbled project?
A budget app. I'm tired of all the good ones being web apps that spy on you. Multiple accounts, recurring expenses, ability to set goals, there's a lot of features you can implement (or not) depending on how far you take it.
Currently I use https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.onetwoapps.mh which gets the job done but I want similar functionality outside of android.
Frontend for AOL that looks like regular desktop AOL but without all the ads and popups. If only because it's something I doubt anyone would make before the EOL of Windows 10.
Torrent based software installs and updates, to reduce workloads on Linux servers
A modern UI for ClamAV or a Subsonic Music Streaming client (In gtk4)
A utility to map extruded lines/objects/shapes to STL files. For example, say you have an STL of a curved vase. You want to add a spiral to it. So you place the photo of a spiral on the object. The utility lets you decide where on the STL it'll be placed, then you can decide the extrusion depth (positive or negative).
Possibly including some type of LLM, too. So you can import your STL, then type something like "picture of the Simpsons in the style of ancient Greek amphora vase paintings." It'll appear as line art on the 3D object
Note that I don't need this, myself. You want to work on something interesting, so I thought for a few minutes and came up with this. :)
Maybe meta, but a linux installer for windows that works just like a normal installer on windows. You download the
.exe, double click it, it opens a wizard you can walk though, and by the end of the process, after it reboots, you're in a linux distro.You know what, it could also be for linux, when I think about it... not everybody wants to write on a flash drive, reboot, run through installation, reboot.
The original idea is that non-technical users don't know what an "OS" is. They might search for "windows alternative", "windows replacement", "linux installer" (if they heard of linux), and so on without knowing it's an OS. If they could download something that installed "the linux app" without having to know about partitions, flashing a USB stick, MBR vs UEFI, distros, etc. it could make things much much easier.
- distro: which flavor of linux would you like (as stable as possible)? gaming (bazzite), productivity (ubuntu), bleeding edge (debian sid?), design, development, expert, security, ...
- desktop environment: look and feel? more like MacOS (gnome), more like windows 7,8,10 (KDE), more like XP (LXDE, LXQt), Windows 98 feel (XfCE, ....)
- probably other things, but maybe that's all non-techies care about
The installer could have warnings for configurations e.g "you have an NVIDIA card $model, this has known issues with your display manager (Wayland), would you like to select automatic fix?".
How about a Linux (or even multi platform) version of Stereoscopic Player?
I would love a radarr/sonarr style app but for YouTube with sponsorblock built in.
edit: sorry I missed where you said desktop app
Permanently Deleted
An HDR calibration/troubleshooting tool for KDE.
A port of SignalRGB, or a similar app that allows me to set up RGB using a GUI interface where I can arrange the lights to match my physical setup with my mouse. OpenRGB is too cumbersome.
A proper port of Nvidia Control Panel with no features missing (I especially need the 3D settings screen and RTX video enhancement settings). Or ressurect ATI Tray Tools and add more features for both GPU manufacturers. Nvidia X Server is woefully inadequate.
I'm not sure at all why to use Rust for a desktop app unless it's something super complex and demanding like a browser (the motivation for developing Rust in the first place). Otherwise use a garbage collected language that handles more bookkeeping for you.. Also the GUI toolkits so far aren't written in Rust afaik.
Hmm would a GUI toolkit or even a window system (X or Wayland server) in Rust count?
Otherwise I mostly want libraries and CLI programs rather than GUI ones. Or a kernel module. Like rewrite btrfs in Rust since the C version is still full of bugs after all these years from what I can tell.