Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Laravel VS Synapse

Compare Laravel VS Synapse and see what are their differences

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Laravel logo Laravel

A PHP Framework For Web Artisans

Synapse logo Synapse

Synapse is a semantic launcher written in Vala that you can use to start applications as well as find and access relevant documents and files by making use of the Zeitgeist engine.
  • Laravel Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-24
  • Synapse Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-17

Laravel features and specs

  • Eloquent ORM
    Laravel includes Eloquent ORM, which provides a beautiful and simple ActiveRecord implementation for working with your database. It allows for easy interaction with your databases, offering an intuitive syntax.
  • Blade Templating Engine
    The Blade templating engine offers a clean and efficient syntax for writing templates. It provides features like template inheritance and sections, which makes template design more manageable and organized.
  • Artisan CLI
    Laravel's Artisan Command Line Interface (CLI) allows developers to perform repetitive tasks and manage their Laravel project more efficiently with built-in commands for database migration, seeding, and building tasks.
  • Strong Community and Ecosystem
    Laravel has a large and active community that provides an abundance of resources, including packages, tutorials, and screencasts on Laracasts. This ecosystem allows for quick problem-solving and an extensive library of reusable components.
  • Robust Security Features
    Laravel provides built-in security features such as salted and hashed passwords, encryption, and protection against common vulnerabilities like SQL injection and cross-site request forgery (CSRF).
  • Efficient Testing
    Laravel comes with PHPUnit integrated, along with convenient helper methods, making writing test cases and performing automated testing more straightforward. This leads to better code reliability and fewer bugs.
  • Comprehensive Documentation
    Laravel has thorough and well-organized documentation that covers all its features in detail. This makes it easier for new and experienced developers to understand and use the framework effectively.

Possible disadvantages of Laravel

  • Performance Overhead
    Since Laravel is a full-featured framework, it includes many built-in functions and layers that can create performance overhead. For very high-performance applications, fine-tuning may be necessary.
  • Steep Learning Curve for Beginners
    For those new to web development or coming from a different programming paradigm, Laravel can be challenging to grasp initially due to its extensive features and modern PHP practices.
  • Heavy Dependency on Composer
    Laravel heavily relies on Composer for dependency management. While this is beneficial for package management, it can be a downside if you are not familiar with Composer or have issues managing packages.
  • Frequent Updates
    Laravel receives frequent updates and changes in the new versions, which can sometimes lead to compatibility issues with existing projects. Keeping up with the updates can be time-consuming.
  • Hosting Requirements
    Laravel requires specific server configurations and dependencies, which may not be available on all shared hosting services. This can necessitate using a Virtual Private Server (VPS) or dedicated server, which might have higher costs.

Synapse features and specs

  • Open Source
    Synapse is an open-source project, which means that it is free to use, modify, and distribute. This allows for community contributions and transparency in development.
  • Lightweight
    Synapse is designed to be lightweight and fast, which ensures that it does not consume excessive system resources, making it suitable for a wide range of hardware configurations.
  • Customizable
    Users can customize Synapse through plugins and scripts, allowing for personalized workflows and extended functionality tailored to individual needs.
  • Cross-Platform
    Synapse is cross-platform and can be used on various operating systems, providing flexibility and consistency for users who work in multi-OS environments.
  • Efficient Search
    Synapse offers efficient search capabilities, allowing users to quickly find and launch applications, files, and perform other tasks through a convenient interface.

Possible disadvantages of Synapse

  • Learning Curve
    New users may find it difficult to familiarize themselves with Synapse's features and customization options, leading to an initial learning curve.
  • Limited Documentation
    Although active, Synapse's documentation can be somewhat limited or fragmented, making it difficult for some users to find comprehensive guides and support.
  • Occasional Bugs
    As with many open-source projects, users may encounter occasional bugs or stability issues, which can affect the user experience until they are resolved.
  • Community Dependency
    Development and support largely depend on community contributions and volunteers, which can lead to slower resolution of issues and less predictable updates.
  • Less Integration
    Compared to some proprietary alternatives, Synapse may offer fewer integration options with other applications and services, limiting its functionality for some users.

Analysis of Laravel

Overall verdict

  • Yes, Laravel is considered a good framework for web development.

Why this product is good

  • Features
    Laravel includes a wide variety of built-in features such as authentication, routing, sessions, and caching, which accelerate the development process.
  • Community
    It has a large and active community which contributes to a rich ecosystem of packages and resources.
  • Ease of use
    Laravel emphasizes simplicity and elegance, making it relatively easy to use, especially for developers familiar with PHP.
  • Documentation
    It provides comprehensive and well-structured documentation, which is very helpful for beginners and experienced developers alike.
  • Modern tooling
    Laravel offers modern tooling with features like a robust CLI, built-in task scheduling, and an expressive ORM called Eloquent.

Recommended for

  • Developers looking to build scalable web applications with PHP.
  • Teams seeking a framework with a strong balance between power and ease of use.
  • Projects that benefit from built-in solutions for common web application requirements like authentication and API support.
  • Developers interested in a framework with out-of-the-box features and an expressive syntax.

Analysis of Synapse

Overall verdict

  • Synapse is a well-regarded application among Linux users due to its speed and functionality. It is considered a good choice if you are seeking a fast, lightweight, and extensible application launcher.

Why this product is good

  • Synapse, available on launchpad.net, is a semantic launcher for Linux. It is favored for its simplicity and efficiency in launching applications, finding files, and executing commands. Synapse enhances productivity by using plugins to quickly locate and open items on your system without needing to navigate menus or folders manually. Its lightweight design ensures minimal system resource usage, making it a good tool for older hardware as well.

Recommended for

    Synapse is particularly recommended for Linux users who value speed and efficiency in workflow management. It is an excellent choice for those running older systems or anyone looking to simplify their desktop environment by reducing the time spent navigating through traditional application menus.

Laravel videos

Laravel in 100 seconds

More videos:

  • Review - Why Laravel is Still Best in 2018

Synapse videos

Cannondale Synapse Hi-Mod Disc Red eTap | Review | Cycling Weekly

More videos:

  • Review - Cannondale Synapse Review - Endurance Road Bike
  • Review - CANNONDALE SYNAPSE REVIEW (AFTER 9 MONTHS!)

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Laravel and Synapse)
Developer Tools
100 100%
0% 0
App Launcher
0 0%
100% 100
Web Frameworks
100 100%
0% 0
Windows Tools
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Laravel and Synapse

Laravel Reviews

Laravel vs. Symfony: A Comprehensive Comparison of PHP Frameworks
Laravel has a vibrant ecosystem with many first-party packages, such as Laravel Horizon for queue management, Laravel Echo for real-time events, and Laravel Sanctum for API authentication, that make it easy to extend functionality without much hassle.
The 20 Best Laravel Alternatives for Web Development
Oh, you bet. When devs talk Symfony, they’re eyeing robustness and a modular vibe that Laravel fans might miss. Its reusable components could tempt even the most loyal Laravel artisans to at least take a peek.
Top 9 best Frameworks for web development
The best frameworks for web development include React, Angular, Vue.js, Django, Spring, Laravel, Ruby on Rails, Flask and Express.js. Each of these frameworks has its own advantages and distinctive features, so it is important to choose the framework that best suits the needs of your project.
Source: www.kiwop.com
Top 5 Laravel Alternatives
However, there are other excellent choices other than Laravel as well. So, let’s check out some excellent Laravel alternatives before you hire Laravel developers India for your web development project. This post provides you with a thorough understanding of the available web development framework choices and their benefits over Laravel. For that, let’s first discuss the...
Framework review: Laravel vs CodeIgniter
Let's start with CodeIgniter first. It focuses on performance and speed. It offers a simple, easy-to-learn syntax, making it ideal for beginners. CodeIgniter uses its own proprietary Active Record implementation for database operations, which provides a simple and intuitive way to interact with data. Unlike Laravel, CodeIgniter does not enforce a specific architectural...
Source: infinyhost.com

Synapse Reviews

Top Big Data Tools For 2021
Azure is a cloud computing platform that serves as a basis for many data solutions. As explained previously in another post on this blog, Synapse Analytics is a rebranded version of the Azure SQL Data Warehouse. Among the improvements included in the new version, it is worth noting that now it integrates with Apache Spark and makes it possible to combine data warehousing and...

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Laravel seems to be a lot more popular than Synapse. While we know about 241 links to Laravel, we've tracked only 1 mention of Synapse. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Laravel mentions (241)

  • Build a Command Line TODO App with Goravel Console
    You may have used Laravel (personally, I’ve used it a lot!). I love its developer-friendly experience and straightforward architecture. However, for the Go community, something similar was missing. Enter Goravel—a framework that makes life easier for PHP developers like me who want to work with Go. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • I analyzed how Supabase and Laravel launched. Here's what I learned.
    Laravel is a PHP web framework used by developers around the world. In March 2024, they launched Laravel Cloud with a full lineup of updates. All dropped at once. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • How to Build a Blog with Laravel (& Send Slack Notifications)
    Laravel is a full-stack PHP framework that can be integrated with powerful front-end frameworks such as React or Vue.js. With Laravel, you’ll be creating websites and apps that are scalable and capable of growth. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • Everything about AI Function Calling (MCP), the keyword for Agentic AI
    If you're planning to convert a backend server to an AI agent using function calling, avoid languages and frameworks that require developers to manually write JSON schemas, such as PHP Laravel and Java Spring RestDocs. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • A Structured Workflow for "Vibe Coding" Full-Stack Apps
    Using a full-stack framework with batteries-included, such as Wasp for JavaScript (React, Node.js, Prisma) or Laravel for PHP, takes the complexity out of piecing the different parts of the stack together. Since these frameworks are opinionated, they've chosen a set of tools that work well together, and the have the added benefit of doing a lot of work under-the-hood. In the end, the AI can focus on just the... - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
View more

Synapse mentions (1)

  • Opportunistic, pragmatic Pop!
    Ditch Cosmic's launcher. It is underpowered. The best launcher to this day is still Synapse, even though it is not in active development anymore. It still has great potential and could easily be extended to really fit into Pop while providing some new functions nothing else has. Source: over 3 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Laravel and Synapse, you can also consider the following products

Django - The Web framework for perfectionists with deadlines

DockbarX - DockbarX is a standalone dock that groups and launches applications.

Ruby on Rails - Ruby on Rails is an open source full-stack web application framework for the Ruby programming...

Gnome Do - Simple, sleek, swift, smart. Do. GNOME Do allows you to quickly search for many items present on your desktop or the web, and perform useful actions on those items. GNOME Do is inspired by Quicksilver & GNOME Launch Box.

CodeIgniter - A Fully Baked PHP Framework

Gnome-Pie - Gnome-Pie is a circular application launcher for Linux.