7 ms·
The gzipped tar for this is 90MB. It's 265MB unzipped. That's bigger than my kernel, my initramfs, all my terminal emulators, my media player, glibc and the gn
by usrbinbash 5y ago
The gzipped tar for this is 90MB. It's 265MB unzipped.
That's bigger than my kernel, my initramfs, all my terminal emulators, my media player, glibc and the gnu coreutils together, and I'd still have room to spare for some mp3s.
No.
- sneak 5y agoI don't think bundle size is a legitimate/relevant criticism of a modern graphical application, unless we're talking double- or triple-digit gigabytes. I have 8000GB in my portable machine.
- jstummbillig 5y agoIt certainly is on hn.
- usrbinbash 5y agoStorage is free. RAM isn't. And even if it were, the size of an application in relation to its purpose is a relevant metric.
- sneak 5y agoThe overton window of "acceptable program size" has shifted so many times as technology advances, surely you can recognize that your own personal attachments to a given SI suffix are irrelevant? Our ancestors would argue that a 1MB application was bloated. Our children will complain about 1000GB bundles. The programs, of course, do vastly different things as the realm of what is possible with technology inexorably advances. Comparing a complete bundle for an advanced graphical application framework with a TUI application is apples to oranges, and the curmudgeons who are shaking their collective canes at the kids on their lawn are actually technically competent and can recognize this if they choose. There are legitimate technical criticisms to doing things with JS and Electron and whatnot; but "the bundle is hundreds of megabytes" isn't that.
- smoldesu 5y agoJust because that window shifts over time doesn't mean that we need to push our boundaries for acceptable program size, nor is it an excuse not to optimize our software. This kind of mindset is how we end up with terminal emulators that take more than 500ms to launch, and how we end up with systems that take on unconscionable amounts of bloat. I use Konsole as my terminal, which is a 50kb binary. If your replacement is orders of magnitude larger than my current option, it had better brew my coffee and have bacon ready by the time I wake up every morning. Instead, all we got was a lousy authy sync.
- novok 5y agoKonsole is not actually 50kb, you need to include the libraries it imports to do an apples to apples comparison. What is going on here is tabby is the equivalent of statically linked + a virtual machine OS called a browser, while konsole is not. To properly compare the two, you need to compare source code size, as if you downloaded tabby and ran it an browser. To really compare them properly, you'd also need to make the typescript compiled into equivalent JS VM assembly. There you'll find them probably to be significantly closer in size
- pseudalopex 5y agoSharing libraries with other apps is a feature.
- usrbinbash 5y ago>Konsole is not actually 50kb, you need to include the libraries it imports to do an apples to apples comparison. No, we really don't, because these libraries are available to other programs as well, whereas a huge packaged application is availabe to nothing than itself.
- handrous 5y agoCorrect, shipping the equivalent of an entire full-featured GUI OS just to provide a terminal emulator is crazy.
- 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- geodel 5y agoIndeed. A large multi GB app feel hefty and solid. I feel reassured that it won't fly off the window when working outside on a windy day.
- pritambaral 5y ago> I have 8000GB in my portable machine. Good for you, I guess. I, myself, have 120GB.
- trav4225 5y agoThus "for the modern age"... ;-)
- toastercat 5y agoI laughed at this.
- hbn 5y agoTheir website also has 630MB memory footprint from my current readings
- gcr 5y agoTheir website seems to download a minimal Linux webassembly to provide the demo something to connect to. That probably accounts for most of the perceived slowness of page load and the terminal
- geodel 5y agoWouldn't you love to run this next generation terminal in AWS and pay monthly fee of M5.2Xlarge or some such :-)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- polycaster 5y agoI don't get this focus on file size, really. 256 MB is ~0.02% of my current disk space. If the product is fine and the tools the developers choose to build it demand for this space – so it be, I couldn't care less. Given it won't run on my Raspi. But there can still be value in things that don't run on micro computers.
- usrbinbash 5y agoAs I have written elsewhere in this thread: Storage is free, RAM isn't. And neither is battery power. A terminal application is supposed to be small, and next to invisible in terms of resources required. If it isn't, it will be uninstalled.
- phist_mcgee 5y ago>supposed to be According to whom? The terminal gods? According to wikipedia: "A terminal emulator, terminal application, or term, is a computer program that emulates a video terminal within some other display architecture. Though typically synonymous with a shell or text terminal, the term terminal covers all remote terminals, including graphical interfaces." I don't see anything in there about "invisible in terms of resources required"
- touristtam 5y agoConsidering this is a basic tool the assumption isn't completely wrong to have a small footprint. Allowing to have a myriad of tools with each a memory footprint equivalent to Chrome is a recipe to hog all your RAM.
- usrbinbash 5y agoThe wikipedia definition talks about terminals in the general sense of the word as in "something where some interface connection terminates." In that strictest sense of the word, even an RDP client onto a windows desktop is a "terminal". As the article points out itself however: The colloquial semantic meaning of the word, aka. what is usually meant by it, is TEXT TERMINAL. And btw.: Even for a fully featured RDP client, I wouldn't accept a size of 200+MB. The one I use at work is barely 4MB.
- stewbrew 5y agoIt seems to be an electron app, which explains the size. It's quite feature rich though.
- usrbinbash 5y agoSo is my current terminal app, which clocks in at 250 kilobyte. And its memory and CPU footprint is so low, I can't find it in htop without filtering.
- HenrikB 5y agoSinclair ZX81 is calling and wanna have a word about memory requirements :p
- phist_mcgee 5y agoWhat is this, code golf? Why does it matter in the end? People are allowed to choose, and pooh poohing something just because it doesn't fit your idea of productivity apps isn't very helpful.
- pritambaral 5y ago> People are allowed to choose ... Your parent isn't forcing anyone to choose the same way as them. They're just advertising facts that inform a buyer when choosing. Your aggression, on the other hand ... > ... pooh poohing something just because it doesn't fit your idea of productivity apps isn't very helpful. The way you're pooh poohing your parent's criticism because it doesn't fit your idea of what matters and what not, isn't very helpful.
- usrbinbash 5y agoPeople are also allowed to voice their opinion about the performance characteristics of applications, and their use-case to resource-footprint ratio.
- clajiness 5y ago/r/gatekeeping
- pkrumins 5y agoExcept they shipped and all you did was write this comment. When you ship your own smaller terminal, let us know.
- hrbf 5y agoThat’s Electron for you. A perfect encapsulation of what “modern age” appears to mean now.