People that are upset about electron should consider it’s not:
Electron App vs Wonderful Fully Supported Native Linux Application
The reality is that your choice is largely:
Electron App vs No App (maybe running their windows app in wine if you can get that to work)
It’s not like companies are going to go build a native linux app but electron got in their way. It was always electron or no support.
So if you like the app, remember that the ram and the cpu you paid for doesn’t provide value unless it’s doing something. There’s no trophy you get at the end of your life for “most cumulative ram left idle”
Well, there’s also Tauri which requires slightly more testing since you actually use the device’s built-in browser, so there might be differences. The upside is a much smaller bundle size, quick start-up times and often less RAM usage than with Electron.
I know that Electron is a browser. But the issue is that it’s a different browser, and AFAIK Electron applications don’t share libraries etc. like Chrome/Firefox tabs would, which makes Electron apps even more inefficient than web apps.
I’d prefer that. One firefox instance can easily run 10 big fat websites while using like 6GB of RAM. 10 electron apps on the other hand? 32GB RAM won’t be enough.
I don’t hate that electron is used for everything, I just hate electron itself, mostly. Starting with that it’s memory consumption, measured at the example of Discord (though that may be not 100% accurate as they use a custom version), is higher than just using a separate FF instance, with a separate profile. Works for Discord and Spotify (though spotifyd + spotify-tui is better anyway). Signal etc. is still only available as an electron app.
The biggest problem I have with electron is more of a problem with Nvidia though - combining Nvidia + Wayland is bad enough, especially for windows refreshing below 60 Hz, as this causes them to flicker as in letting stripes of the wallpaper through. Electron apps are even worse, not only do they start to flicker as whole after not being in focus for 10 minutes, which is very annoying with them on other screens, but they also start to ‘lag’, as elements don’t update fluently. That affects EVERY chromium based program - including steam.
We were so close to a much better version of electron. Mozilla just killed off the concept of a separate engine, like chromium is, due to issues with low demand but high cost and instead only has the main FF repo now. A separate FF engine would very likely mean a FF based electron alternative would be built by the community. Bug free, fully compatible with everything, not under Google’s control.
People that are upset about electron should consider it’s not:
Electron App vs Wonderful Fully Supported Native Linux Application
The reality is that your choice is largely:
Electron App vs No App (maybe running their windows app in wine if you can get that to work)
It’s not like companies are going to go build a native linux app but electron got in their way. It was always electron or no support.
So if you like the app, remember that the ram and the cpu you paid for doesn’t provide value unless it’s doing something. There’s no trophy you get at the end of your life for “most cumulative ram left idle”
Well, there’s also Tauri which requires slightly more testing since you actually use the device’s built-in browser, so there might be differences. The upside is a much smaller bundle size, quick start-up times and often less RAM usage than with Electron.
A lot of the time, the alternative would be a website running in the browser.
Electron IS a browser. It’s a Chromium browser to be exact with all the Chromium UI elements except the very bare minimum removed.
So the only difference that remains is running a website in a tab or in a fancy window.
I know that Electron is a browser. But the issue is that it’s a different browser, and AFAIK Electron applications don’t share libraries etc. like Chrome/Firefox tabs would, which makes Electron apps even more inefficient than web apps.
I’d prefer that. One firefox instance can easily run 10 big fat websites while using like 6GB of RAM. 10 electron apps on the other hand? 32GB RAM won’t be enough.
I don’t hate that electron is used for everything, I just hate electron itself, mostly. Starting with that it’s memory consumption, measured at the example of Discord (though that may be not 100% accurate as they use a custom version), is higher than just using a separate FF instance, with a separate profile. Works for Discord and Spotify (though spotifyd + spotify-tui is better anyway). Signal etc. is still only available as an electron app.
The biggest problem I have with electron is more of a problem with Nvidia though - combining Nvidia + Wayland is bad enough, especially for windows refreshing below 60 Hz, as this causes them to flicker as in letting stripes of the wallpaper through. Electron apps are even worse, not only do they start to flicker as whole after not being in focus for 10 minutes, which is very annoying with them on other screens, but they also start to ‘lag’, as elements don’t update fluently. That affects EVERY chromium based program - including steam.
We were so close to a much better version of electron. Mozilla just killed off the concept of a separate engine, like chromium is, due to issues with low demand but high cost and instead only has the main FF repo now. A separate FF engine would very likely mean a FF based electron alternative would be built by the community. Bug free, fully compatible with everything, not under Google’s control.
Some people like to use more than 1 app you know.
Also, RAM is never ever idle. It is used as filesystem cache when not used by programs thus speeding up read accesses significantly.
Just to nitpick, RAM is usually not idle.
Alright, let’s nitpick! No, it is never ever idle, every few cycles is a refresh cycle, which is work.