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Hey! I manage the unofficial build at https://github.com/aaddrick/claude-desktop-debian https://github.com/aaddrick/claude-desktop-debian Debian is in the nam

Hey! I manage the unofficial build at https://github.com/aaddrick/claude-desktop-debian https://github.com/aaddrick/claude-desktop-debian Debian is in the name, but scope has grown to all backends, compositors, etc. The main reason must companies don't publish Linux electron apps is fragmentation. If you're doing anything more than rendering a webpage as an app, it starts to get complicated. I've got a bank of VM's setup for testing, and I still need it up.

aaddrick 3mo ago
Still mess it up* Swipe keyboards on mobile are awful, but I can't break that habit.
- freedomben 3mo ago
  Nice, you have RPMs and DEBs in a remote repo we can add! Thanks for making it so easy to use :-) Also, I can't break the swipe keyboard habit either. It's the worst, but still better than the alternatives. Someday I hope physical keyboard makes a return (but I"m not holding my breath)
  - aaddrick 3mo ago
    You're welcome!
- deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]
- Kye 3mo ago
  For future reference: you can edit posts for up to 2 hours.
  - Normal_gaussian 3mo ago
    Is that not karma gated?
    - Kye 3mo ago
      It's been so long I have no idea what the karma thresholds are so this is possible.
      - Normal_gaussian 3mo ago
        I had a little search this morning, and I think I was wrong and you're right. 2h edit/delete when you have no replies.
- tasuki 3mo ago
  We have basically achieved AGI, but typing on mobile is still an unsolved problem. GBoard's dictionaries for Czech and Polish are still missing many usual declensions...
  - kskdkwjdkwkkds 3mo ago
    > We have basically achieved AGI We haven’t.
    - notai 3mo ago
      You’re absolutely right!
- Normal_gaussian 3mo ago
  The old minuum keyboard was fantastic; now I'm forced to use a swipe keyboard I'm constantly making mistakes - but at least its faster than pecking.
roryrjb 3mo ago
If OpenCode can do it, then Anthropic can do it.
sgt 3mo ago
Biggest problem with Linux apps - i.e. distributed with ease the way that Windows and macOS apps are distributed, is the lack of a stable ABI. If you asked me about this 20 years ago I'd say in 2026 there'd for sure be a stable ABI, but no.
- est31 3mo ago
  The stable Linux ABI is Win32 provided by Wine.
  - deleted 3mo ago
    [deleted]
  - preg_match 3mo ago
    [dead]
- WD-42 3mo ago
  This isn’t an issue in practice because the software running on Linux is open source. Yes if you want to distribute proprietary binary blobs and have them work forever it’s going to be a challenge, but in that case better to stick with the binary blob operating system.
  - sgt 3mo ago
    There's plenty of software running on Linux that is not open source, though.
    - WD-42 3mo ago
      Such as? The only proprietary software I have running on my machine is electron apps, which are essentially bloated VMs. As we’ve seen from this thread, this is still apparently too great of an engineering feat for anthropic to tackle. I don’t think I’m unique in this regard.
      - sgt 3mo ago
jkwang 3mo ago
I have been running Claude Desktop on Linux via the unofficial Debian build for months and it is solid. The unofficial repo at github.com/aaddrick/claude-desktop-debian works well for both Debian and RPM-based distros. That said, an official build would make a huge difference for enterprise adoption. Many companies have policies against unofficial packages, and the signing + update mechanism is always going to be more trustworthy when it comes from Anthropic directly. For anyone waiting: the unofficial build is perfectly usable for personal projects. But I would love to see Anthropic prioritize this -- the Linux developer community is exactly the audience that pushes Claude the hardest.
- dang 3mo ago
  Can you please not post AI-generated or AI-edited comments to HN? It's not allowed here - see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#generated https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#generated and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47340079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47340079. Of course, it's impossible to know for sure what was LLM processed or not, but most of your posts are getting classified that way. You obviously have good points to make and are welcome here! but if you'd please write text by hand which you plan to post to HN itself, we'd appreciate it. The community feels strongly about this right now.
  - dsubburam 3mo ago
    I do not know what fraction of LLM-processed messages are due to posters not being confident in their written English. To the extent that it is meaningful, we can a) be welcoming and indicate that we're OK with broken English (content and intent typically do get through), and/or b) allow posting in languages other than English (does this even work right now?). Above probably ahead of its time, but thought I'd just make the suggestion.
    - dang 3mo ago
      I doubt that we'd do (b) (though maybe? who knows) - but I agree completely with (a)!
- 3mo ago
WD-42 3mo ago
> The main reason must companies don't publish Linux electron apps But they do? Companies don’t publish anything BUT electron apps. If desktop Linux gets anything from outside of FOSS, it’s electron. See Spotify, discord, slack, vscode… list goes on. I don’t think a for profit company has provided a GTK or qt app for Linux in the last 20 years. I applaud your efforts but this is a supposed trillion dollar company with a product that probably has thousands of electron apps in its training set. They should be paying you.
- Aurornis 3mo ago
  Electron apps don’t work well across all of the Linux distributions if you’re doing anything that isn’t very simple. The comment was that the Electron apps aren’t being released for Linux even when they exist because Linux is so much harder to support, even in Electron. If they don’t have resources (or desire) to keep the Electron app working on all the Linux distros then they definitely won’t have the resources to write a completely separate GTK app for the few Linux users.
  - WD-42 3mo ago
    Anything that isn’t very simple? Like a llm chat interface? If zoom and Microsoft Teams of all people can do it, anthropic should be able to. Have you considered that maybe their code is just bad?
    - deleted 3mo ago
      [deleted]
    - thewebguyd 3mo ago
      Microsoft gave up on teams for linux, the app that's available now is a community electron webapp wrapper, and Zoom isn't electron at all, its QT but they chose the path of only supporting a few distros (Ubuntu, Debian, Mint, RedHat) and they also don't rely on system QT versions, they vendor it. If your app is open source, I say just build & test on one of the major distros and let the community port it to others. If its closed source, well, good luck. But if what the parent said is true, that you now collect a bunch of very vocal pissed off customers because you didn't support their favorite distro, then its just not worth it at the current marketshare that desktop Linux has. There's also the challenge of you just can't make any assumptions about what may be present or not on someone's Linux machine, even with the major distros.
Aurornis 3mo ago
> The main reason must companies don't publish Linux electron apps is fragmentation. If you're doing anything more than rendering a webpage as an app, it starts to get complicated. Can confirm. At a past company we worked hard to release a Linux desktop client for our customers who wanted it, even though the number was small. It turns into compatibility hell very fast. You think you can target a couple recent Ubuntu releases and everything will be good, but then you’re getting peppered with complaints from people using distributions you’ve never heard of because some part of the app isn’t working right. So your engineers spend a half day installing that in a VM and debugging it, but the problem is in upstream somewhere. The number of tickets with Linux issues keeps growing and each one is taking more time to debug, all for a number of customers that is so small you can’t justify doing it. But those customers are angry. And vocal. They’re posting all over Twitter, Hacker News, and Reddit about how your company’s software is garbage, without mentioning that they’re running an unknown distribution on a 13 year old ThinkPad. This even impacts open source projects. Several popular OSS Electron apps don’t work on many popular distros unless you set some command line workarounds, and even then it’s flakey. The open source projects get a pass because it’s open source, but if your company releases something you might be picking up a lot of angry, vocal customers that you didn’t want.
- bazmattaz 3mo ago
  Could you not be extremely clear and state which distros are supported and make it clear that it may work on others but that they are untested
  - jay_kyburz 3mo ago
    Unity Game Engine does this, They support x distro only. So you mess around installing their chosen OS only to find stuff still doesn't work properly. :)
- seabrookmx 3mo ago
  Flatpak mostly solves this for GUI apps.
  - 3mo ago
seabrookmx 3mo ago
Have you considered flatpak support? I know it's has its rough edges, but I use many apps across arch/Fedora/Ubuntu that are delivered as a single flatpak.
- aaddrick 3mo ago
  I've looked on the rare occasion, but no one is asking for it on the repo, so hadn't been a priority like other distribution channels. It's great that I can ship one item for all platforms, but Flatpack doesn't solve the compatibility discovery problem for me. More context in my reply to the comment linked here :https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48434436#48435661 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48434436#48435661
  - petre 3mo ago
    Just put some instructions on your website telling the user what to type into their shell? If they can't handle that, I guess it's the browser client.
_fat_santa 3mo ago
There's a similar project for Codex Desktop: https://github.com/ilysenko/codex-desktop-linux https://github.com/ilysenko/codex-desktop-linux. After going through this process to get codex installed on Linux I'm honestly baffled why OpenAI doesn't have an official port. Though I haven't tested every part of the app, everything works as intended, even got computer use working without any issues.
orhmeh09 3mo ago
Sounds like a job for a more capable LLM than Opus.
Levitating 3mo ago
> The main reason must companies don't publish Linux electron apps is fragmentation. flatpak!
giancarlostoro 3mo ago
I know they don't do it due to fragmentation, but things like appimage do exist.
- lowbloodsugar 3mo ago
  Genuine question: how does that help?
  - giancarlostoro 3mo ago
    I've used various Linux distros, and if I see an appimage, I usually download those, and they usually just work. Apparently Linus Torvalds liked AppImage too. https://archive.ph/PSqlB https://archive.ph/PSqlB
krzyk 3mo ago
> The main reason must companies don't publish Linux electron apps is fragmentation. Unfortunately they do, instead of implementing a proper native application (don't hire web developers to do native apps). Look at e.g. Cisco Webex, or Telegram. You can make a proper native application that just works and is not electron. A lot of people don't like electron apps, and it is more important in current economy (memory prices are too high to invest in more RAM).
deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]
cl3misch 3mo ago
Wouldn't Flatpak be a solution to many of those problems? Develop the app against one Window Manager / Desktop environment and have them as requirements of the Flatpak?
- josteink 3mo ago
  Flathub has banned any software developed using AI or which is «ethically questionable». I’m pretty sure that excludes Claude Desktop. https://www.techtimes.com/articles/317463/20260531/flathub-ai-ban-blocks-every-submission-type-flatpak-repos-enforcement-hits-open-source-hardest.htm https://www.techtimes.com/articles/317463/20260531/flathub-a...
DrFritz2 3mo ago
I have used it from the beginning. It's 100% functional.
MaxHodler 3mo ago
Thanks for this. What are the downsides of using your build vs a hypothetical one from Anthropic?

aaddrick 3mo ago

Still mess it up* Swipe keyboards on mobile are awful, but I can't break that habit.

freedomben 3mo ago
Nice, you have RPMs and DEBs in a remote repo we can add! Thanks for making it so easy to use :-) Also, I can't break the swipe keyboard habit either. It's the worst, but still better than the alternatives. Someday I hope physical keyboard makes a return (but I"m not holding my breath)
- aaddrick 3mo ago
  You're welcome!
deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]
Kye 3mo ago
For future reference: you can edit posts for up to 2 hours.
- Normal_gaussian 3mo ago
  Is that not karma gated?
  - Kye 3mo ago
    It's been so long I have no idea what the karma thresholds are so this is possible.
    - Normal_gaussian 3mo ago
      I had a little search this morning, and I think I was wrong and you're right. 2h edit/delete when you have no replies.
tasuki 3mo ago
We have basically achieved AGI, but typing on mobile is still an unsolved problem. GBoard's dictionaries for Czech and Polish are still missing many usual declensions...
- kskdkwjdkwkkds 3mo ago
  > We have basically achieved AGI We haven’t.
  - notai 3mo ago
    You’re absolutely right!
Normal_gaussian 3mo ago
The old minuum keyboard was fantastic; now I'm forced to use a swipe keyboard I'm constantly making mistakes - but at least its faster than pecking.

roryrjb 3mo ago

If OpenCode can do it, then Anthropic can do it.

sgt 3mo ago

Biggest problem with Linux apps - i.e. distributed with ease the way that Windows and macOS apps are distributed, is the lack of a stable ABI. If you asked me about this 20 years ago I'd say in 2026 there'd for sure be a stable ABI, but no.

est31 3mo ago
The stable Linux ABI is Win32 provided by Wine.
- deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]
- preg_match 3mo ago
  [dead]
WD-42 3mo ago
This isn’t an issue in practice because the software running on Linux is open source. Yes if you want to distribute proprietary binary blobs and have them work forever it’s going to be a challenge, but in that case better to stick with the binary blob operating system.
- sgt 3mo ago
  There's plenty of software running on Linux that is not open source, though.
  - WD-42 3mo ago
    Such as? The only proprietary software I have running on my machine is electron apps, which are essentially bloated VMs. As we’ve seen from this thread, this is still apparently too great of an engineering feat for anthropic to tackle. I don’t think I’m unique in this regard.
    - sgt 3mo ago

jkwang 3mo ago

I have been running Claude Desktop on Linux via the unofficial Debian build for months and it is solid. The unofficial repo at github.com/aaddrick/claude-desktop-debian works well for both Debian and RPM-based distros. That said, an official build would make a huge difference for enterprise adoption. Many companies have policies against unofficial packages, and the signing + update mechanism is always going to be more trustworthy when it comes from Anthropic directly. For anyone waiting: the unofficial build is perfectly usable for personal projects. But I would love to see Anthropic prioritize this -- the Linux developer community is exactly the audience that pushes Claude the hardest.

dang 3mo ago
Can you please not post AI-generated or AI-edited comments to HN? It's not allowed here - see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#generated https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#generated and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47340079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47340079. Of course, it's impossible to know for sure what was LLM processed or not, but most of your posts are getting classified that way. You obviously have good points to make and are welcome here! but if you'd please write text by hand which you plan to post to HN itself, we'd appreciate it. The community feels strongly about this right now.
- dsubburam 3mo ago
  I do not know what fraction of LLM-processed messages are due to posters not being confident in their written English. To the extent that it is meaningful, we can a) be welcoming and indicate that we're OK with broken English (content and intent typically do get through), and/or b) allow posting in languages other than English (does this even work right now?). Above probably ahead of its time, but thought I'd just make the suggestion.
  - dang 3mo ago
    I doubt that we'd do (b) (though maybe? who knows) - but I agree completely with (a)!
3mo ago

WD-42 3mo ago

> The main reason must companies don't publish Linux electron apps But they do? Companies don’t publish anything BUT electron apps. If desktop Linux gets anything from outside of FOSS, it’s electron. See Spotify, discord, slack, vscode… list goes on. I don’t think a for profit company has provided a GTK or qt app for Linux in the last 20 years. I applaud your efforts but this is a supposed trillion dollar company with a product that probably has thousands of electron apps in its training set. They should be paying you.

Aurornis 3mo ago
Electron apps don’t work well across all of the Linux distributions if you’re doing anything that isn’t very simple. The comment was that the Electron apps aren’t being released for Linux even when they exist because Linux is so much harder to support, even in Electron. If they don’t have resources (or desire) to keep the Electron app working on all the Linux distros then they definitely won’t have the resources to write a completely separate GTK app for the few Linux users.
- WD-42 3mo ago
  Anything that isn’t very simple? Like a llm chat interface? If zoom and Microsoft Teams of all people can do it, anthropic should be able to. Have you considered that maybe their code is just bad?
  - deleted 3mo ago
    [deleted]
  - thewebguyd 3mo ago
    Microsoft gave up on teams for linux, the app that's available now is a community electron webapp wrapper, and Zoom isn't electron at all, its QT but they chose the path of only supporting a few distros (Ubuntu, Debian, Mint, RedHat) and they also don't rely on system QT versions, they vendor it. If your app is open source, I say just build & test on one of the major distros and let the community port it to others. If its closed source, well, good luck. But if what the parent said is true, that you now collect a bunch of very vocal pissed off customers because you didn't support their favorite distro, then its just not worth it at the current marketshare that desktop Linux has. There's also the challenge of you just can't make any assumptions about what may be present or not on someone's Linux machine, even with the major distros.

Aurornis 3mo ago

> The main reason must companies don't publish Linux electron apps is fragmentation. If you're doing anything more than rendering a webpage as an app, it starts to get complicated. Can confirm. At a past company we worked hard to release a Linux desktop client for our customers who wanted it, even though the number was small. It turns into compatibility hell very fast. You think you can target a couple recent Ubuntu releases and everything will be good, but then you’re getting peppered with complaints from people using distributions you’ve never heard of because some part of the app isn’t working right. So your engineers spend a half day installing that in a VM and debugging it, but the problem is in upstream somewhere. The number of tickets with Linux issues keeps growing and each one is taking more time to debug, all for a number of customers that is so small you can’t justify doing it. But those customers are angry. And vocal. They’re posting all over Twitter, Hacker News, and Reddit about how your company’s software is garbage, without mentioning that they’re running an unknown distribution on a 13 year old ThinkPad. This even impacts open source projects. Several popular OSS Electron apps don’t work on many popular distros unless you set some command line workarounds, and even then it’s flakey. The open source projects get a pass because it’s open source, but if your company releases something you might be picking up a lot of angry, vocal customers that you didn’t want.

bazmattaz 3mo ago
Could you not be extremely clear and state which distros are supported and make it clear that it may work on others but that they are untested
- jay_kyburz 3mo ago
  Unity Game Engine does this, They support x distro only. So you mess around installing their chosen OS only to find stuff still doesn't work properly. :)
seabrookmx 3mo ago
Flatpak mostly solves this for GUI apps.
- 3mo ago

seabrookmx 3mo ago

Have you considered flatpak support? I know it's has its rough edges, but I use many apps across arch/Fedora/Ubuntu that are delivered as a single flatpak.

aaddrick 3mo ago
I've looked on the rare occasion, but no one is asking for it on the repo, so hadn't been a priority like other distribution channels. It's great that I can ship one item for all platforms, but Flatpack doesn't solve the compatibility discovery problem for me. More context in my reply to the comment linked here :https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48434436#48435661 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48434436#48435661
- petre 3mo ago
  Just put some instructions on your website telling the user what to type into their shell? If they can't handle that, I guess it's the browser client.

_fat_santa 3mo ago

There's a similar project for Codex Desktop: https://github.com/ilysenko/codex-desktop-linux https://github.com/ilysenko/codex-desktop-linux. After going through this process to get codex installed on Linux I'm honestly baffled why OpenAI doesn't have an official port. Though I haven't tested every part of the app, everything works as intended, even got computer use working without any issues.

orhmeh09 3mo ago

Sounds like a job for a more capable LLM than Opus.

Levitating 3mo ago

> The main reason must companies don't publish Linux electron apps is fragmentation. flatpak!

giancarlostoro 3mo ago

I know they don't do it due to fragmentation, but things like appimage do exist.

lowbloodsugar 3mo ago
Genuine question: how does that help?
- giancarlostoro 3mo ago
  I've used various Linux distros, and if I see an appimage, I usually download those, and they usually just work. Apparently Linus Torvalds liked AppImage too. https://archive.ph/PSqlB https://archive.ph/PSqlB

krzyk 3mo ago

> The main reason must companies don't publish Linux electron apps is fragmentation. Unfortunately they do, instead of implementing a proper native application (don't hire web developers to do native apps). Look at e.g. Cisco Webex, or Telegram. You can make a proper native application that just works and is not electron. A lot of people don't like electron apps, and it is more important in current economy (memory prices are too high to invest in more RAM).

deleted 3mo ago

[deleted]

cl3misch 3mo ago

Wouldn't Flatpak be a solution to many of those problems? Develop the app against one Window Manager / Desktop environment and have them as requirements of the Flatpak?

josteink 3mo ago
Flathub has banned any software developed using AI or which is «ethically questionable». I’m pretty sure that excludes Claude Desktop. https://www.techtimes.com/articles/317463/20260531/flathub-ai-ban-blocks-every-submission-type-flatpak-repos-enforcement-hits-open-source-hardest.htm https://www.techtimes.com/articles/317463/20260531/flathub-a...

DrFritz2 3mo ago

I have used it from the beginning. It's 100% functional.

MaxHodler 3mo ago

Thanks for this. What are the downsides of using your build vs a hypothetical one from Anthropic?