The argument that the only advantage of Electron is cross platform portability is not true. Electron tries to duplicate what is already a main stream approach f

The argument that the only advantage of Electron is cross platform portability is not true. Electron tries to duplicate what is already a main stream approach for deploying backend services. The only reliable and sane way do have a stable backend is to explicitly control and isolate all dependencies of the backend services by using virtual environments, Docker or virtual machines. Most people no longer think that it is a good idea to run multiple services on the same server, globally 'pip|npm|bundle install' packages that one of these services needs and hope for the best. Electron tries to do just that on the desktop. It packages all the dependencies that the application needs together with the application and installs them in an isolated app folder (not affecting any other app). It enables easy automatic updates of the whole environment without worrying that the update will break other apps or will not work because some user happens not to have some system library. Sure, this is much earlier stage than with backend services. Ideally Electron could ensure that identical dependencies that are shared between different apps are not installed multiple times, the way Docker does it. Even without such sharing I think that benefits of the Electron approach justify additional MBs on disk.