In this episode of Zed Decoded, Thorsten talks to Mikayla, who's been leading the effort to Zed working on Linux, about the Zed's Linux version and how it's taking shape
It’s open source, and they already said they were Mac only because they used Metal for rendering. It’s not suspicious for devs to use what they’re most familiar with.
Yeah, even Asahi has better OpenGL support than real macOS. They make damn sure you have to use Metal to get the most out of it, just like eventually you get caught up in DirectX on Windows whether you want it or not. You can use Vulkan and OpenGL, but the OS really wants to work with Metal/DirectX buffers in the end.
I appreciate that the devs care enough to make it really good from the start, because that sets the benchmark. Now the Linux version has to have a similar enough polish to it.
In comparison, Atom and VSCode both worked fine on Linux just about day one thanks to Electron, but it was also widely disliked for the poor performance. It’s a part of what Zed competes on, performance compared to VSCode.
While I generally agree with your skeptical attitude toward this, I think the fact that they were targeting Apple’s Metal graphics API to built the most performant possible IDE makes sense. You can’t just snap your fingers and have a Linux graphical stack start working with your software.
I think the reason they targeted macOS first is probably because many of the dev team uses Macs.
As a Linux user, I’ll happily wait for software like this to get ported to native Linux APIs so we get performant text editors instead of more Electron crap.
I was kinda referencing warp, a supposedly new terminal that was also written in Rust, had AI stuff, started on Mac, and finally got a Linux version, which lasted 30 seconds on my computer once I saw there is no option to use it unless you make an account. Yes. For a LOCAL terminal. Nuts.
Somehow all these OSS projects that start with only a Mac client seem so suspicious to me…
I wonder if they will enforce a login to use the software?
It’s open source, and they already said they were Mac only because they used Metal for rendering. It’s not suspicious for devs to use what they’re most familiar with.
That in itself is a suspicious choice tbh
What’s suspicious about it…?
No idea, especially since MacOS has limited OpenGL support and no Vulkan support, Metal is basically the only graphics API on Mac
Yeah, even Asahi has better OpenGL support than real macOS. They make damn sure you have to use Metal to get the most out of it, just like eventually you get caught up in DirectX on Windows whether you want it or not. You can use Vulkan and OpenGL, but the OS really wants to work with Metal/DirectX buffers in the end.
I appreciate that the devs care enough to make it really good from the start, because that sets the benchmark. Now the Linux version has to have a similar enough polish to it.
In comparison, Atom and VSCode both worked fine on Linux just about day one thanks to Electron, but it was also widely disliked for the poor performance. It’s a part of what Zed competes on, performance compared to VSCode.
While I generally agree with your skeptical attitude toward this, I think the fact that they were targeting Apple’s Metal graphics API to built the most performant possible IDE makes sense. You can’t just snap your fingers and have a Linux graphical stack start working with your software.
I think the reason they targeted macOS first is probably because many of the dev team uses Macs.
As a Linux user, I’ll happily wait for software like this to get ported to native Linux APIs so we get performant text editors instead of more Electron crap.
They start with Mac clients because those devs use Macs.
I was kinda referencing warp, a supposedly new terminal that was also written in Rust, had AI stuff, started on Mac, and finally got a Linux version, which lasted 30 seconds on my computer once I saw there is no option to use it unless you make an account. Yes. For a LOCAL terminal. Nuts.