5 ms·

That ship has sailed. If I look at my Dock right now, from left to right I'm running: - Nautilus - Brave (Chromium) - Gnome-terminal - VSCode (Electron) -

by jorvi 3y ago

That ship has sailed. If I look at my Dock right now, from left to right I'm running: - Nautilus - Brave (Chromium) - Gnome-terminal - VSCode (Electron) - Telegram Desktop (̶E̶l̶e̶c̶t̶r̶o̶n̶ QT)[1] - WhatsApp (web wrapper in Electron)[1] - Discord (Electron) - Spotify (Chromium Embedded Framework) - Betterbird (Gecko, might as well be Electron) - TickTick (Electron) - Steam (Chromium Embedded Framework) In a way it is very interesting to me, Chromium has pretty much become a "kernel" of sorts that all web technologies run atop. And I don't really buy the "Chromium gives Google power over the web", as it is permissively licensed, and there is at least one other giant stakeholder in the form of Microsoft. Kind of makes me wish GNU and Apple would do what Microsoft has done, integrate a Chromium-based WebView into the OS and optimize it to the gills. The battle between Blink (Chromium), WebKit and Gecko has already been lost, might as well give your users the best UX they can get. [1]There is work being done on native GTK clients by third parties, namely - Paper Plane for Telegram: https://github.com/paper-plane-developers/paper-plane https://github.com/paper-plane-developers/paper-plane - Whakarere for Whatsapp: https://github.com/tobagin/whakarere https://github.com/tobagin/whakarere

afavour 3y ago
> Kind of makes me wish GNU and Apple would do what Microsoft has done, integrate a Chromium-based WebView into the OS It’s not Chromium based but Apple does have exactly this in the OS. Given both Chromium and WebKit target the same web standards there should be a solid crossover. The reality isn’t there but it wouldn’t take much (except for willingness on Apple’s part, which is hard to come by)
- jorvi 3y ago
  Yeah I know Apple has their own WkWebview (maybe they were even the first? not sure). But as you pointed out, it requires devs to look out for any edge cases / missing features it has in comparison to Chromium's Webview. The nice thing about a universal Webview is that devs no longer have to spend time testing across web engines. All they would have to do is test against a few generations of Chromium. I know that's not a thing free software stans like to think about or hear because its already been happening in slow-motion, with less and less devs testing against anything but Chromium, but I feel there are strong benefits to it. In a way its the SystemD debacle all over again. Centralization like that feels spooky and very un-unixy, but it brings such an enormous host of benefits.
przmk 3y ago
Telegram Desktop is fortunately not an electron app. It's Qt.
- jorvi 3y ago
  Thanks, edited! I must admit it / its performance feels very "webby"
  - przmk 3y ago
    That's strange. It's by far the snappiest, modern IM app that I've used.
eviks 3y ago
How is telegram Electron if it's https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop C++/QT?
- jorvi 3y ago
  Thanks, for letting me know, edited! Its performance has always felt very "webby" to me. Goes to show native is not a silver bullet for all our UI responsiveness woes :)
  - odiroot 3y ago
    It's very snappy for me on Plasma. One of the fastest apps actually.
jwells89 3y ago
The official Telegram client is Qt on Windows and Linux and AppKit on macOS, not Electron.
carlosjobim 3y ago
> Kind of makes me wish GNU and Apple would do what Microsoft has done, integrate a Chromium-based WebView into the OS and optimize it to the gills. For MacOS, you can almost always get high quality native apps. I don't know why this isn't the case on other platforms. Strangely enough, it is mostly the mega-corps that insist on not making native apps, even though they should have all resources for it: VSCode, Spotify, YouTube, WhatsApp. Through and through laggy garbage apps if you don't have the latest machine.
- hollerith 3y ago
  >laggy garbage apps if you don't have the latest machine. Does not describe Youtube.com or VSCode in my experience.
  - carlosjobim 3y ago
    If you're on an Intel MacBook, using YouTube Music is a miserable experience. As for YouTube.com itself, it's okay, but FreeTube is significantly more responsive. VSCode was more laggy than native competitors on my machine. Especially when selecting text. Maybe our tolerance for lag is different? I know a ton of people swear by VSCode, but when an app has bad latency on basic interface functions it just throws me off. People with higher lag/latency tolerance may be right, that it's worth the trade-off to get an otherwise better app. But I will always go for non-lag native apps.
    - fauigerzigerk 3y ago
      >VSCode was more laggy than native competitors on my machine. VSCode has become really fast in the last year or so. Previously, I sometimes used other text editors for a quick edit, but now any lag that VSCode may still have has fallen below my personal sensory threshold. I dread the situations where I have to resort to Xcode. It's native, but it's unbelievably slow and crashes more often than any software I have used since Windows 3.1.
      - carlosjobim 3y ago
Anon826 3y ago
> And I don't really buy the "Chromium gives Google power over the web", as it is permissively licensed, and there is at least one other giant stakeholder in the form of Microsoft. Google completely controls Chromium, it is their project, they decide what patches are accepted into the code. Microsoft Edge just like Brave and the other forks all depend on Google for the actual code, all they do is add some minor features. Google does not care about Microsoft's opinion regarding Chromium's direction.
- jorvi 3y ago
  You have a deep misunderstanding of what "control" means.
ksec 3y ago
So we need to to better optimise Electron to lower memory usage and CPU resources.
forward1 3y ago
A simple XSS turns into RCE with Electron desktop apps. I don't understand how technically competent people can in good faith accept this outrageous risk.

by jorvi 3y ago

afavour 3y ago

> Kind of makes me wish GNU and Apple would do what Microsoft has done, integrate a Chromium-based WebView into the OS It’s not Chromium based but Apple does have exactly this in the OS. Given both Chromium and WebKit target the same web standards there should be a solid crossover. The reality isn’t there but it wouldn’t take much (except for willingness on Apple’s part, which is hard to come by)

jorvi 3y ago
Yeah I know Apple has their own WkWebview (maybe they were even the first? not sure). But as you pointed out, it requires devs to look out for any edge cases / missing features it has in comparison to Chromium's Webview. The nice thing about a universal Webview is that devs no longer have to spend time testing across web engines. All they would have to do is test against a few generations of Chromium. I know that's not a thing free software stans like to think about or hear because its already been happening in slow-motion, with less and less devs testing against anything but Chromium, but I feel there are strong benefits to it. In a way its the SystemD debacle all over again. Centralization like that feels spooky and very un-unixy, but it brings such an enormous host of benefits.

przmk 3y ago

Telegram Desktop is fortunately not an electron app. It's Qt.

jorvi 3y ago
Thanks, edited! I must admit it / its performance feels very "webby"
- przmk 3y ago
  That's strange. It's by far the snappiest, modern IM app that I've used.

eviks 3y ago

How is telegram Electron if it's https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop C++/QT?

jorvi 3y ago
Thanks, for letting me know, edited! Its performance has always felt very "webby" to me. Goes to show native is not a silver bullet for all our UI responsiveness woes :)
- odiroot 3y ago
  It's very snappy for me on Plasma. One of the fastest apps actually.

jwells89 3y ago

The official Telegram client is Qt on Windows and Linux and AppKit on macOS, not Electron.

carlosjobim 3y ago

> Kind of makes me wish GNU and Apple would do what Microsoft has done, integrate a Chromium-based WebView into the OS and optimize it to the gills. For MacOS, you can almost always get high quality native apps. I don't know why this isn't the case on other platforms. Strangely enough, it is mostly the mega-corps that insist on not making native apps, even though they should have all resources for it: VSCode, Spotify, YouTube, WhatsApp. Through and through laggy garbage apps if you don't have the latest machine.

hollerith 3y ago
>laggy garbage apps if you don't have the latest machine. Does not describe Youtube.com or VSCode in my experience.
- carlosjobim 3y ago
  If you're on an Intel MacBook, using YouTube Music is a miserable experience. As for YouTube.com itself, it's okay, but FreeTube is significantly more responsive. VSCode was more laggy than native competitors on my machine. Especially when selecting text. Maybe our tolerance for lag is different? I know a ton of people swear by VSCode, but when an app has bad latency on basic interface functions it just throws me off. People with higher lag/latency tolerance may be right, that it's worth the trade-off to get an otherwise better app. But I will always go for non-lag native apps.
  - fauigerzigerk 3y ago
    >VSCode was more laggy than native competitors on my machine. VSCode has become really fast in the last year or so. Previously, I sometimes used other text editors for a quick edit, but now any lag that VSCode may still have has fallen below my personal sensory threshold. I dread the situations where I have to resort to Xcode. It's native, but it's unbelievably slow and crashes more often than any software I have used since Windows 3.1.
    - carlosjobim 3y ago

Anon826 3y ago

> And I don't really buy the "Chromium gives Google power over the web", as it is permissively licensed, and there is at least one other giant stakeholder in the form of Microsoft. Google completely controls Chromium, it is their project, they decide what patches are accepted into the code. Microsoft Edge just like Brave and the other forks all depend on Google for the actual code, all they do is add some minor features. Google does not care about Microsoft's opinion regarding Chromium's direction.

jorvi 3y ago
You have a deep misunderstanding of what "control" means.

ksec 3y ago

So we need to to better optimise Electron to lower memory usage and CPU resources.

forward1 3y ago

A simple XSS turns into RCE with Electron desktop apps. I don't understand how technically competent people can in good faith accept this outrageous risk.