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My major annoyance with Electron is every app shipping its own version of it, particularly on Linux where most distros tend to ship electron in the repositories

My major annoyance with Electron is every app shipping its own version of it, particularly on Linux where most distros tend to ship electron in the repositories. I'd really rather not have 5 different chromium versions - that are lacking security updates - on my system. I wish packagers were more aggressive about not bundling them.

dmitrygr 5y ago
It is interesting that you say that. This is fact already exists. An unbundled version of electron, that can be used by multiple applications, is called a web browser. Applications using it are called websites (or PWAs if you must)
- johnnyapol 5y ago
  Unfortunately, certain applications are gimped if you don't use the electron version. A notable example of this for me is Discord where push-to-talk doesn't function in the web version due to API limitations. Another app I use that has this problem is Spotify. While it isn't electron, it is using CEF (chromium embedded framework) and can be dynamically linked to a distro one with some effort. Using the web version means I dont have my music available offline for listening.
hs86 5y ago
Especially, most of these chat apps have functionally similar web/PWA apps. In those cases, I prefer to install them as desktop PWAs or use Chrome's "Create shortcut" feature to get them into my Dock/Taskbar. One little bonus is that my browser extensions also apply to these installed PWAs. For example, the Todoist PWA now shows me the Toggle icon next to each task as an easy shortcut to start the time tracker. In my case, I have these running as Chrome PWAs: - Raindrop.io - Grammarly Editor - Todoist - Discord - Element - Whatsapp - Twitter And these are still running as regular Electron/CEF apps: - 1Password - Obsidian - VSCode - Gitkraken - Slack - Spotify Whenever the web alternative catches up with the Electron app, I move to the PWA. Probably the biggest drawback of this is that Firefox is not a suitable alternative for me anymore :( https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1407202 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1407202
- jcun4128 5y ago
  I can't believe the 32bit Spotify thing, I have had it happened to me a few times where it exceeded that 4GB threshold and I had to restart it.

dmitrygr 5y ago

It is interesting that you say that. This is fact already exists. An unbundled version of electron, that can be used by multiple applications, is called a web browser. Applications using it are called websites (or PWAs if you must)

johnnyapol 5y ago
Unfortunately, certain applications are gimped if you don't use the electron version. A notable example of this for me is Discord where push-to-talk doesn't function in the web version due to API limitations. Another app I use that has this problem is Spotify. While it isn't electron, it is using CEF (chromium embedded framework) and can be dynamically linked to a distro one with some effort. Using the web version means I dont have my music available offline for listening.

hs86 5y ago

Especially, most of these chat apps have functionally similar web/PWA apps. In those cases, I prefer to install them as desktop PWAs or use Chrome's "Create shortcut" feature to get them into my Dock/Taskbar. One little bonus is that my browser extensions also apply to these installed PWAs. For example, the Todoist PWA now shows me the Toggle icon next to each task as an easy shortcut to start the time tracker. In my case, I have these running as Chrome PWAs: - Raindrop.io - Grammarly Editor - Todoist - Discord - Element - Whatsapp - Twitter And these are still running as regular Electron/CEF apps: - 1Password - Obsidian - VSCode - Gitkraken - Slack - Spotify Whenever the web alternative catches up with the Electron app, I move to the PWA. Probably the biggest drawback of this is that Firefox is not a suitable alternative for me anymore :( https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1407202 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1407202

jcun4128 5y ago
I can't believe the 32bit Spotify thing, I have had it happened to me a few times where it exceeded that 4GB threshold and I had to restart it.