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I feel like there's room for an Electron variant that's just "less electron". As in, I don't need all of Chrome to do my thing; just the HTML rendering engine

I feel like there's room for an Electron variant that's just "less electron". As in, I don't need all of Chrome to do my thing; just the HTML rendering engine and JavaScript interpreter. The thing that makes it 50gb is all the web sockets and ie4-comparable-iframe-shims that nobody ever uses on the desktop. Lop all that stuff and see how big the install is and how much memory it uses. My guess is it would be a lot less.

nkkollaw 8y ago
I'd welcome optimizations, but do we really care if an app is 50MB, in 2018? I see a lot of bashing against Electron because of the size and memory consumption of Electron apps, but at least on Linux Electron is a blessing. Many times it's either an Electron app or no app at all, as many companies wouldn't bother supporting Linux if Electron didn't make it so cheap and easy. With that in mind, with many laptops coming with 128GB of storage and 8GB of RAM nowadays, it it really that big a concern? Even less for developers: my laptop has 1TB HDD + 256GB SSD, and 24GB of RAM. I can definitely spare 50MB of disk space and 200MB of RAM.
- nothrabannosir 8y ago
  > but do we really care if an app is 50MB, in 2018? > my laptop has 1TB HDD + 256GB SSD, and 24GB of RAM. I can definitely spare 50MB of disk space and 200MB of RAM. How much cache does your laptop have? All this RAM usage completely thrashes any caches anywhere. Page caches, disk cache, etc. Slack alone takes a heavy toll on my laptop. Combine it with any heavy website on FF (which has gone insane on mac since Quantum) and the laptop is ready for take-off. Not to mention that we are slowly putting a ±$1k price tag on "comfortable computing". People who spend <$300 on a computer are absolutely screwed, even though they have orders of magnitude more power than a device which took humanity to the moon (to use a hackneyed comparison). I find using developer computers as a measuring stick a painfully elitist perspective. In an ideal world, software developers would be banned from spending more than $250 on hardware. Ever. [for their current workstation]. That would do more to change the face of software than any processor improvement ever did. > Many times it's either an Electron app or no app at all, as many companies wouldn't bother supporting Linux if Electron didn't make it so cheap and easy. I agree with this. However, focusing on first order consequences can be deceptive. Perhaps it is precisely the existence of Electron that suffocates any budding competition for more performant but slightly more involved alternatives?
  - RaleyField 8y ago
    Make WPF-like replacement that works on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS and their browsers and we will all switch. You are demanding that we all become mega crops with N teams duplicating the same code in with native frameworks and that just won't happen because a) we don't have cash laying around b) users don't know the difference between 10 MB app and 200 MB app, only us do. > How much cache does your laptop have? Enough. How much bandwidth does my ram have? Enough that it can fill cpu caches in I don't notice time. I still have 12 year old Conroe with spinning hard disk laying around and it never had any problem running VS Code so there's that data point.
    - snuxoll 8y ago
      > Make WPF-like replacement that works on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS and their browsers and we will all switch. Literally Xamarin.Forms, though without the Linux support still (and browsers, of course, because native apps aren’t web apps).
- megaman22 8y ago
  Yes, we do. Besides, without Electron, we'd have more native Windows apps, and running Win32 under Wine on Linux is still often better than Electron.
- jasonkostempski 8y ago
  I dont mind running 1 electron app on my desktop, where battery isnt an issue, but imagine if every app you run all day was electron. How long would a battery last? How much more energy is being consumed across the world because of it? If your making a get-in-get-out type of app, its a no-brainer, but if your making a live communications app, a text editor for professional text enterers, an image editor for artist, that's supposed to run all day, I think its worth considering something more efficient. It'd be a hard comparison to make right, but I'd like to see if electron apps don't undo all the energy saving changes done by chip manufactures.
- called_it 8y ago
  > I can definitely spare 50MB of disk space and 200MB of RAM Yeah, once. For a game, or a movie. But not 100 times for utilities I am actively using. Imagine, any given application can be run together with dozens, hundreds of others. Just like any given website is rarely the only website that's open. Looking towards resources you can waste is the wrong approach. Look for waste you can do without, period.
- cmiles74 8y ago
  In this age of portable devices and the battle to get decent battery life out of your machine, Electron apps strike me as counterproductive. There's more to it then just memory usage, I think.
- danpalmer 8y ago
  My laptop is high spec, but each running an Electron app probably reduces my battery life by 20-40 minutes, and if I'm running 3-4 that's a significant drain. The difference in battery life between Chrome + Slack + Atom at work, and Safari + Sublime at home is huge. Quitting Slack often gives me an hour more battery.
- DennisP 8y ago
  By my old standards I have a supercomputer on my lap. I want it to perform like a supercomputer. I don't what all that power to get eaten by programmers using inefficient technologies.
- madmulita 8y ago
  If it's not a hipster's binary (I'm looking at you golang and docker), yes, we do care.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  Not everyone is rich to buy such laptops. Also I don't know any no technical friend using more than 4GB on their computers.
- krapp 8y ago
  >but do we really care if an app is 50MB, in 2018? What happens when every developer decides user resources are practically infinite, so every application uses as much of everything it wants to all the time? What does the current landscape of javascript on the web look like? Not exactly a model of efficiency and speed, for more or less that reason.
madeofpalk 8y ago
I know one of the whole appeals of Electron is the single target, plus being able to take advantage of Node, but I feel like some OS-intergration would be nice. Basically, PWAs for desktop. On Mac you could have a PWA-like target that is backed by the built in Safari, so all you need to distribute is your app (HTML + JS + CSS) itself and it just uses the OS-provided browser runtime.
- roryisok 8y ago
  That would be cool. It's sort of like the idea behind Firefox OS
jclos 8y ago
My question to those who are more informed than me is the following: why isn't the runtime distributed separately, like the JRE? It would essentially allow for smaller apps while keeping the advantages of Electron. It's an obvious thing so I'm sure there are reasons I'm not considering.

nkkollaw 8y ago

I'd welcome optimizations, but do we really care if an app is 50MB, in 2018? I see a lot of bashing against Electron because of the size and memory consumption of Electron apps, but at least on Linux Electron is a blessing. Many times it's either an Electron app or no app at all, as many companies wouldn't bother supporting Linux if Electron didn't make it so cheap and easy. With that in mind, with many laptops coming with 128GB of storage and 8GB of RAM nowadays, it it really that big a concern? Even less for developers: my laptop has 1TB HDD + 256GB SSD, and 24GB of RAM. I can definitely spare 50MB of disk space and 200MB of RAM.

nothrabannosir 8y ago
> but do we really care if an app is 50MB, in 2018? > my laptop has 1TB HDD + 256GB SSD, and 24GB of RAM. I can definitely spare 50MB of disk space and 200MB of RAM. How much cache does your laptop have? All this RAM usage completely thrashes any caches anywhere. Page caches, disk cache, etc. Slack alone takes a heavy toll on my laptop. Combine it with any heavy website on FF (which has gone insane on mac since Quantum) and the laptop is ready for take-off. Not to mention that we are slowly putting a ±$1k price tag on "comfortable computing". People who spend <$300 on a computer are absolutely screwed, even though they have orders of magnitude more power than a device which took humanity to the moon (to use a hackneyed comparison). I find using developer computers as a measuring stick a painfully elitist perspective. In an ideal world, software developers would be banned from spending more than $250 on hardware. Ever. [for their current workstation]. That would do more to change the face of software than any processor improvement ever did. > Many times it's either an Electron app or no app at all, as many companies wouldn't bother supporting Linux if Electron didn't make it so cheap and easy. I agree with this. However, focusing on first order consequences can be deceptive. Perhaps it is precisely the existence of Electron that suffocates any budding competition for more performant but slightly more involved alternatives?
- RaleyField 8y ago
  Make WPF-like replacement that works on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS and their browsers and we will all switch. You are demanding that we all become mega crops with N teams duplicating the same code in with native frameworks and that just won't happen because a) we don't have cash laying around b) users don't know the difference between 10 MB app and 200 MB app, only us do. > How much cache does your laptop have? Enough. How much bandwidth does my ram have? Enough that it can fill cpu caches in I don't notice time. I still have 12 year old Conroe with spinning hard disk laying around and it never had any problem running VS Code so there's that data point.
  - snuxoll 8y ago
    > Make WPF-like replacement that works on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS and their browsers and we will all switch. Literally Xamarin.Forms, though without the Linux support still (and browsers, of course, because native apps aren’t web apps).
megaman22 8y ago
Yes, we do. Besides, without Electron, we'd have more native Windows apps, and running Win32 under Wine on Linux is still often better than Electron.
jasonkostempski 8y ago
I dont mind running 1 electron app on my desktop, where battery isnt an issue, but imagine if every app you run all day was electron. How long would a battery last? How much more energy is being consumed across the world because of it? If your making a get-in-get-out type of app, its a no-brainer, but if your making a live communications app, a text editor for professional text enterers, an image editor for artist, that's supposed to run all day, I think its worth considering something more efficient. It'd be a hard comparison to make right, but I'd like to see if electron apps don't undo all the energy saving changes done by chip manufactures.
called_it 8y ago
> I can definitely spare 50MB of disk space and 200MB of RAM Yeah, once. For a game, or a movie. But not 100 times for utilities I am actively using. Imagine, any given application can be run together with dozens, hundreds of others. Just like any given website is rarely the only website that's open. Looking towards resources you can waste is the wrong approach. Look for waste you can do without, period.
cmiles74 8y ago
In this age of portable devices and the battle to get decent battery life out of your machine, Electron apps strike me as counterproductive. There's more to it then just memory usage, I think.
danpalmer 8y ago
My laptop is high spec, but each running an Electron app probably reduces my battery life by 20-40 minutes, and if I'm running 3-4 that's a significant drain. The difference in battery life between Chrome + Slack + Atom at work, and Safari + Sublime at home is huge. Quitting Slack often gives me an hour more battery.
DennisP 8y ago
By my old standards I have a supercomputer on my lap. I want it to perform like a supercomputer. I don't what all that power to get eaten by programmers using inefficient technologies.
madmulita 8y ago
If it's not a hipster's binary (I'm looking at you golang and docker), yes, we do care.
pjmlp 8y ago
Not everyone is rich to buy such laptops. Also I don't know any no technical friend using more than 4GB on their computers.
krapp 8y ago
>but do we really care if an app is 50MB, in 2018? What happens when every developer decides user resources are practically infinite, so every application uses as much of everything it wants to all the time? What does the current landscape of javascript on the web look like? Not exactly a model of efficiency and speed, for more or less that reason.

madeofpalk 8y ago

I know one of the whole appeals of Electron is the single target, plus being able to take advantage of Node, but I feel like some OS-intergration would be nice. Basically, PWAs for desktop. On Mac you could have a PWA-like target that is backed by the built in Safari, so all you need to distribute is your app (HTML + JS + CSS) itself and it just uses the OS-provided browser runtime.

roryisok 8y ago
That would be cool. It's sort of like the idea behind Firefox OS

jclos 8y ago

My question to those who are more informed than me is the following: why isn't the runtime distributed separately, like the JRE? It would essentially allow for smaller apps while keeping the advantages of Electron. It's an obvious thing so I'm sure there are reasons I'm not considering.