14 ms·
I would like to see Positron rebooted. Positron is to Firefox what electron is to chromium. https://mykzilla.org/2017/03/08/positron-discontinued/ https://mykz
by thinkingemote 3y ago
I would like to see Positron rebooted. Positron is to Firefox what electron is to chromium.
https://mykzilla.org/2017/03/08/positron-discontinued/ https://mykzilla.org/2017/03/08/positron-discontinued/
- stefanos82 3y agoHow about quickjs or tauri?
- jojobas 3y agoYeah, it's an awesome idea to waste few hundred megabytes of RAM to run your app. This browser-in-a-box cancer needs to die a painful death.
- diath 3y agoUntil there's a viable solution for desktop native GUI, this trend will continue.
- coldacid 3y agoQt?
- EasyMark 3y agotoo many gotchas with LGPL to become a universal solutions. I wish that gtk was more stable across all platforms. I have a few on macos and some are less than ... stable... compared to on linux.
- rubymamis 3y agoI don’t think it’s as bad as you make it to be. Qt is a great option imo.
- figomore 3y agoI like WX.
- scotty79 3y agoHas anyone been sentenced for falling into those lgpl gotchas?
- skeletal88 3y agoWhat gotchas are there? The stuff required for doing guis is lgpl, without any kind of other licenses
- Liquid_Fire 3y agoIsn't GTK also LGPL anyway?
- jenadine 3y agoElectron's web engine is also LGPL. (And GTK too)
- jojobas 3y agoNative UI has been there for decades before. Yes, cross-platform requires extra effort. Hell even Wine is more efficient an approach for cross-platform distribution.
- LunaSea 3y ago> Yes, cross-platform requires extra effort. Aaand you lost most companies. > Hell even Wine is more efficient an approach for cross-platform distribution. I'm sure that customers will be willing to install and run Wine.
- steve_rambo 3y agoWine requires no more installation than Electron. There are lots of "pirated" releases for macOS/Linux with a bundled copy of Wine (sometimes with third party patches or some libraries swapped out).
- postalrat 3y agoextra effort = no less than 50x the effort
- jojobas 3y agoBullshit. If that's what it takes you please seek another line of work.
- postalrat 3y agoI can built a basic app with html, javascript, etc that supports many platforms in an evening. How long do you think it would take to support windows, macos, ios, android, xbox, linux, etc, etc? Much more than 50x the time even if you already are familiar with development on all the plaforms.
- jojobas 3y agoQt covers 5 of the 6 platforms you named, and many more "etc". Yes it takes a bit more than a boot camp graduate to code that, and might take a bit more time still.
- niutech 3y agoThere are many: QML, NodeGui, Flutter, React Native and plenty more lightweight Electron alternatives: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38687662 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38687662 Or to mention native libs: GTK, wxWidgets, Xamarin.
- phantomathkg 3y agoYou can write performant app if you want. But why stopping other on what they want to do?
- jojobas 3y agoBecause your average Joe doesn't know the difference and the race to the bottom affects everyone.
- KronisLV 3y ago> Because your average Joe doesn't know the difference and the race to the bottom affects everyone. Would it be possible that the average Joe is more familiar with a web stack vs a native or cross platform desktop stack? Is it not possible that the difference therefore might be between: - having a questionably performing app built on web technologies - vs a buggy one that's built on a native/cross-platform stack, or even not having one altogether because they can't build with that tech as opposed to: - having a questionably performing app built on web technologies - having an awesome native/cross-platform app that runs better and respects the OS design Or, who knows, maybe it's just cheaper to use web tech and those other options have failed to make themselves as easy to get started with and work on, especially when you're looking for good cross platform options that would run nearly everywhere and be popular enough to have tooling and tutorials. It's the same how something like Rust might be a good fit for writing correct web applications, but very few people actually use it for that and might instead reach for something like Python because that lets them iterate faster, even if neither the type system, nor the performance is great. Actually, who knows, maybe the problem is not that there's not enough "good software" out there, but rather that different people have wildly different views on what matters, in addition to there just being too much software in general.
- jojobas 3y agoYour notion that browser-based apps are somehow bug-free is absurd. Skype on Linux, for one, keeps the microphone open after a call, forever. The issue has been known for more than 2 years. I'd say Electron adds no value with respect to fighting bugs other than containing the consequences in the browser sandbox.
- wodenokoto 3y agoAccording to Chrome, this tab alone uses over 200mb.
- incrudible 3y agoEight Megabytes and Constantly Swapping. This too, shall pass. The minimum amount of memory for a double buffered fullscreen surface at 8bpc on a 4k monitor is 48MB. RAM is meant to be used, and if it was not for memory hogs, the DRAM industry would be a decade behind where it is today.
- hulitu 3y ago> RAM is meant to be used, Some of us have to run other programs besides Teams. /s
- wolpoli 3y agoYes, I also happened to run a browser which shares the same philosophy on RAM.
- JohnFen 3y ago> RAM is meant to be used Sure, and when applications hog it, it prevents me from putting it to better use.
- ac29 3y agoAccording to Firefox, it uses 25MB. I suspect neither measurement is entirely accurate.
- pquki4 3y agoAnd you won't get Skype, Slack, Teams and many other applications people use on a daily basis on Linux, at all. Features on Mac will be limited compared to Windows version, because the team prioritizes work on the platform with the largest userbase. There will be more inconsistencies in feature and UI for "desktop" version vs web version, if companies still bother to maintain two versions. That's the future you want to see, huh? Have you developed a cross-platform desktop application in the last few years and make sure everything works on every platform? Probably not. If there is a way to make it easy, cheap, reliable to support multiple platforms and the solution takes little system resources, I'm sure everyone will want to do that. Before that happens, stop your wasting complaining about the Electorn mode of making apps. This will not change. It is the only thing that makes business sense and make developers' life easy at this time. Or to put it simply, are you going to pay for the extra cost used for developing "native" applications for each platform? Put your money where your mouth is.
- chriswarbo 3y agoSeems a bit weird to use Skype as your example, since (a) it already had a native application for Linux, (b) AFAIK it was the same (Qt) codebase as Windows and Mac, so no feature discrepancy, and (c) Skype also developed clients for other operating systems like Symbian, Android, Blackberry, etc. as well as a Java-based client for other mobiles. If anything, it's easier to develop cross-platform native applications these days, since the mobile space has mostly collapsed to just Android + iOS.
- steve_rambo 3y agoTelegram manages just fine, and looks the same on all platforms. I even ran it on FreeBSD for a few weeks with no issues. Their desktop client is developed pretty much by one person in C++ with Qt. It's really feature rich these days and actually works, unlike some of the things you've listed.
- pxc 3y agoDoesn't Telegram use a web view via QtWebkit?
- asoneth 3y agoI agree it's disappointing to think I've found a native app only to realize it's just an Electron app. But I don't need the idea to die, I just want better transparency in app stores so I can know ahead of time whether an application is native or just a wrapped webapp. > This browser-in-a-box cancer needs to die a painful death. That depends on what you think the result would be. What do you think companies who use Electron, CEF, embedded web views, etc today would do if those technologies all died tomorrow? For example, do you think GitHub, WordPress, Figma, Discord, Whats App, Slack, Trello, Skype, or Spotify would hire native Windows desktop development teams? (Or even Mac/Linux desktop development teams?) Personally I doubt that there would be any increase in native app development. Any developer who cares about this is already making native applications, Electron just makes web apps slightly more convenient.
- rubymamis 3y ago> But I don't need the idea to die, I just want better transparency in app stores so I can know ahead of time whether an application is native or just a wrapped webapp. That’s a great idea. Or a simple “Native App” badge for native apps.
- hulitu 3y ago> Electron just makes web apps slightly more convenient. Yes. Until the next Cornflicker, Sircam, Code red, Blaster.
- niutech 3y agoThey would use Qt/QML, NodeGui, Sciter, Flutter, React Native or another lightweight Electron alternative: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38687662 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38687662.
- moritzwarhier 3y agoIsn't Tauri already capable to run several apps in their own sandboxes with a single host process, just like browser tabs? I can see complaining about being forced to run multiple browsers at once, the hate Web as a UI stack in general, I don't really understand.
- postalrat 3y agoMake a better alternative and people will flock to it.
- niutech 3y agoThere are better alternatives to Electron, like: Qt/QML, Tauri, Flutter, Sciter, React Native, NodeGui, DeskGap, etc. but people don't flock to it.
- zerr 3y agoThunderbird is developed on top of Firefox.
- kwhitefoot 3y agoIs it based on the current version? I though it was based on the old XUL based Firefox.
- jraph 3y agoYep, but it seems to be a PITA. They endure whatever changes happen on Firefox UI, which are well tested on Firefox, but not on Thunderbird and Thunderbird has much more UI to manage than Firefox. See this interesting Thunderbird talk at FOSDEM on visual change that mentions this issue [1]. You also kinda have to fork Firefox to do this. It would be good to be able to #include <gecko-embedded-framework.h> and build the UI from there. XULRunner seemed nice too. Using Gecko when you are not Firefox is such a pain that - all alternative browsers that are not forks of Firefox that were based on Gecko have abandoned: they stopped being maintained, or switched to WebKit or Blink, which is a shame. - all apps based on XUL / Gecko, like Songbird, have mostly disappeared. It needs to be easier. Gecko seems like a drag for Thunderbird. It shouldn't. For this, it needs to be a proper toolkit, with stability guarantees, and proper support to third party apps, and easily reusable. That's not the focus for Firefox devs though. [1] https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event/fosdem-2024-2728-thunderbird-why-visual-change-is-good/ https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event/fosdem-2024-2728-thun...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bouk 3y agoThis is being worked on https://github.com/tauri-apps/tauri/issues/579 https://github.com/tauri-apps/tauri/issues/579
- DarkUranium 3y agoHonestly, what I would like to see more than "Electron, but Gecko" would be "Chromium Embedded Framework, but Gecko". It exists for Android, but not desktop (judging by a number of dead links, it looks like it used to exist for desktop). (or s/Gecko/Servo/ if desired)
- pier25 3y agoAnd in that vein, a reduced version of Servo for rendering desktop/games GUIs. There's a lot of stuff in CSS and HTML nobody uses anymore like floats, blink, marquee, etc. Ultralight has a product based on that idea but I think they use WebKit. https://ultralig.ht/ https://ultralig.ht/
- ksec 3y agoSomething isn't that right. It is using 1/5 to 1/10 of memory compared to Chrome while still supporting 95% of what WebKit supports.
- coolelectronics 3y agowhy? firefox performance will always be worse than blink, if only because of spidermonkey the last thing people want from electron is a worse version of it hogging more resources
- tadfisher 3y agoI don't think SpiderMonkey is the boat anchor you claim it to be: https://arewefastyet.com/linux64/benchmarks/overview https://arewefastyet.com/linux64/benchmarks/overview