Comment by csnover | Hacker News Reader

Comment by csnover | Hacker News Reader

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> I would replace the start menu with a Raycast clone. Most people want to open files, ask a question or run an app they know the name of, not scroll a list of things they might never use. If you add in semantic search users don't even need to know the app name.

So I’m looking at the Raycast web site, and aside from the UI being a little different, Raycast seems like it is itself a clone of the already long-existing KDE Plasma start menu (Kickoff) and KRunner? I guess the only thing missing from the KDE one is “AI”. Is there something I am missing about how Raycast is some innovation not already realised in the Linux desktop?

> If we can't do full extendable tags then at least add user defined groups/tags like Work and Games and Photos to make finding things easier. People remember what a file is better than where it's stored.

Extended attributes[0] already exist if you want. But, as the linked wiki page indicates, filesystem attributes are fragile. And what is the tangible benefit? In practice, users can already just dump all their files into a random directory and use Baloo or whatever. Which is probably better anyway since it’s easier to have a D-Bus API with multiple user-space implementations than having to wipe and reformat to use a different filesystem if you have some problem with it.

[0] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Extended_attributes

The AI features arrived with the recent v2 release. Raycast originally became popular as a better Spotlight replacement. As you can see, the idea was never entirely original, since Apple and other apps already offered many of the same features. Raycast’s strengths are its extensibility, lightweight design, speed, and excellent UI/UX. It’s a well-polished app.

That was Raycast v1, though. I don’t like the direction they’ve taken with v2, so I uninstalled it and switched to Tinycast.

Raycast is successful because it's an incredibly widely used and adopted integration layer. The official repo has thousands of plugins, pretty well maintained together, collectively, and there are thousands more out there. https://github.com/raycast/extensions/tree/main/extensions

KDE krunner has plugins. But there is not afaik a big tent ownership system like Raycast. And krunner is only going to attract KDE users. Raycast is mainly mac, but also, there's Vicinae which runs on a lot more systems, and it can run >50% of the Raycast plugins without a sweat, is designed to be drop in compatible.

It's also absurdly easy to write Raycast extensions. It uses web platform technologies that "just work", that don't have ornery toolchains and need lots of dev libraries installed. With KRunner you can probably use whatever library you want to do whatever you want, which is good, but hard, where-as with Raycast there's a pretty comprehensive and powerful API that offers a ton, that is well defined, and that other plugins will show you the way on. https://developers.raycast.com/

And it's a 3rd party app that can pull the rug anytime without any consequence.

Yes, first party owners never pulled the rug from under your OS extension, it's constitutionally prohibited

Good thing about open source is there are always forks.

Bad thing is there are never enough resources to maintain them

"I refuse to use AI, can somebody version bump this JSON file for me?!"

Not the point is it? You're still not bound to a entities control.

Vicinae works great and is compatible with most plugins, ye FUD grump. It's what I use every day!

My issue is with closed source launchers

Raycast is krunner but with better UI, more features and more flexibility from plugin.

KRunner also has plugins, Gnome Also has search extensions, without depending on a 3rd party app that might pull the rug anytime.

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