4 ms·

Can you expand on what you mean? There are plenty of competition in the OS space, Linux: (Canonical (Ubuntu), IBM (RedHat/Fedora), System76 (Pop!_OS)), MS, App

Can you expand on what you mean? There are plenty of competition in the OS space, Linux: (Canonical (Ubuntu), IBM (RedHat/Fedora), System76 (Pop!_OS)), MS, Apple, Google, and so on. How would using Android or AOSP (open) as the platform to run apps on many platforms better than using Electron with the web as the backend, which, despite all of the negativity going around for it, is likely to be more free/open and integrated with the OS than Android runtime would be?

pjmlp 6y ago
Linux distribution wars as replacement to UNIX wars is not competition. Just sand of the same bag with distinct flavours, as we say back home.
yholio 6y ago
Monstrosities such as Electron ar the simptom of the problem, not it's solution. Competition in this context means that the end user is free to select any device from any manufacturer, and can expect his applications to run roughly in the same way and with similar performance on comparable hardware, without repurchasing them, without getting locked to a proprietary application store that takes a pound of flesh from the developers etc. The competition between walled gardens, ex. Apple vs. Android, is not conducive to a consumer friendly outcome, see for example the Windows vs. everybody else competition of the previous era. A single proprietary platform will gain a critical mass and people will orient themselves naturally to the system that can run their applications. An Android subsystem running on Windows has the chance to be exceptionally close to the hardware and provide a near native experience.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  Competition in this context means that the end user is free to select any device from any manufacturer, and can expect his applications to run roughly in the same way and with similar performance on comparable hardware, without repurchasing them, without getting locked to a proprietary application store that takes a pound of flesh from the developers etc. That would require the operating systems to become a commodity with little to distinguish between them. There is no way any of the OS developers is going to allow that to happen.
riskable 6y ago
Electron isn't the answer. It's just a decent (if exceptionally bloated) solution to the problem that Microsoft intentionally created by making it so much of a pain in the ass to make truly cross platform apps. Other, better solutions will be popularized soon enough. My money's on some of the promising new Rust GUI frameworks. Because even if they're limited in functionality at first their foundation is just too good to ignore.
- shawnz 6y ago
  Why can't Electron be the answer? I am of the opinion that WebKit/HTML5 are the most advanced, flexible, accessible UI toolkits we've ever created. I don't think some small Rust project will be able to upset that massive undertaking which has been decades in the making. Consider also that Electron can be improved and made more efficient.
  - yholio 6y ago
    Electron is not merely a HTML5 renderer for GUIs, though; it's a whole OS abstraction layer that translates native paradigms to a platform independent format that can be scripted. An Android subsystem would be exactly that, and more, with near native performance, a shared runtime etc. And yes, even HTML5 applications that Android supports. And it would be more than just a hack. Microsoft will have all the incentives to make it run properly, since it gives them access to a whole world of non-WinOS applications that their users will become dependent on.
- jodrellblank 6y ago
  > "the problem that Microsoft intentionally created by making it so much of a pain in the ass to make truly cross platform apps." ? Unix shell scripts were a pain in the ass to make cross-platform compatible between the big Unix vendors, before Windows ever existed.
  - Gibbon1 6y ago
    Problem I've encountered with building Unix projects on windows is symlinks. Either the build process creates them or worse they'll part of the project itself. Which is really not nice.

pjmlp 6y ago

Linux distribution wars as replacement to UNIX wars is not competition. Just sand of the same bag with distinct flavours, as we say back home.

yholio 6y ago

Monstrosities such as Electron ar the simptom of the problem, not it's solution. Competition in this context means that the end user is free to select any device from any manufacturer, and can expect his applications to run roughly in the same way and with similar performance on comparable hardware, without repurchasing them, without getting locked to a proprietary application store that takes a pound of flesh from the developers etc. The competition between walled gardens, ex. Apple vs. Android, is not conducive to a consumer friendly outcome, see for example the Windows vs. everybody else competition of the previous era. A single proprietary platform will gain a critical mass and people will orient themselves naturally to the system that can run their applications. An Android subsystem running on Windows has the chance to be exceptionally close to the hardware and provide a near native experience.

tonyedgecombe 6y ago
Competition in this context means that the end user is free to select any device from any manufacturer, and can expect his applications to run roughly in the same way and with similar performance on comparable hardware, without repurchasing them, without getting locked to a proprietary application store that takes a pound of flesh from the developers etc. That would require the operating systems to become a commodity with little to distinguish between them. There is no way any of the OS developers is going to allow that to happen.

riskable 6y ago

Electron isn't the answer. It's just a decent (if exceptionally bloated) solution to the problem that Microsoft intentionally created by making it so much of a pain in the ass to make truly cross platform apps. Other, better solutions will be popularized soon enough. My money's on some of the promising new Rust GUI frameworks. Because even if they're limited in functionality at first their foundation is just too good to ignore.

shawnz 6y ago
Why can't Electron be the answer? I am of the opinion that WebKit/HTML5 are the most advanced, flexible, accessible UI toolkits we've ever created. I don't think some small Rust project will be able to upset that massive undertaking which has been decades in the making. Consider also that Electron can be improved and made more efficient.
- yholio 6y ago
  Electron is not merely a HTML5 renderer for GUIs, though; it's a whole OS abstraction layer that translates native paradigms to a platform independent format that can be scripted. An Android subsystem would be exactly that, and more, with near native performance, a shared runtime etc. And yes, even HTML5 applications that Android supports. And it would be more than just a hack. Microsoft will have all the incentives to make it run properly, since it gives them access to a whole world of non-WinOS applications that their users will become dependent on.
jodrellblank 6y ago
> "the problem that Microsoft intentionally created by making it so much of a pain in the ass to make truly cross platform apps." ? Unix shell scripts were a pain in the ass to make cross-platform compatible between the big Unix vendors, before Windows ever existed.
- Gibbon1 6y ago
  Problem I've encountered with building Unix projects on windows is symlinks. Either the build process creates them or worse they'll part of the project itself. Which is really not nice.