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Every native app has to be run in a gigantic special OS when it could be a small webapps running in a medium sized browser. Many many ChromeOS (web based consu

Every native app has to be run in a gigantic special OS when it could be a small webapps running in a medium sized browser. Many many ChromeOS (web based consumer OS) laptops are 4GB of ram. You do not want to try that with any normal OSes.

dkersten 2y ago
That’s because windows is loaded with trash. You can easily run desktop Linux with 4 GB or RAM, and people have been doing it for decades.
VyseofArcadia 2y ago
But the browser is running in that gigantic special OS. It's not like the OS magically disappears.
- jauntywundrkind 2y ago
  I've already mentioned ChromeOS as one counter-example. SerenityOS and Ladybird browser forked but until recently had a lot of overlap. LG's WebOS is used on a range of devices, derived from the Palm Pre WebOS released in 2009. The gigantic special OS is baggage which already has been cut loose numberous times. Yes you can run some fine light Linux OS'es in 4GB but man, having done the desktop install for gnome or kde, they are not small at all, even if their runtime is ok. And most users will then go open a web browser anyways. It's unclear to me why people clutch to the legacy native app world, why this other not-connected mode of computing has such persistent adherency to it. The web ran a fine mobile OS in 2009; Palm Pre rocked. It could today.
  - VyseofArcadia 2y ago
    I for one don't want to use web apps. I want the speed, convenience, and availability of native apps. I want to use applications that work if the internet isn't. I want to use applications that store my data locally. I want to use unglamorous applications that just work and use a native GUI toolkit instead of torturing a poor, overburdened document display engine into pretending it's a sane place for apps to run. Not to mention, from the perspective of a developer, the relative simplicity of native apps. Why should I jump through all the hoops of distributed computing to, for example, edit a document in a WYSIWYG editor? This is something I could do comfortably on a Packard Bell in 1992.
    - consteval 2y ago
      The Web is portable, operating systems are not. Windows and Mac, being short-sighted, did this to themselves. Nobody can agree on anything, Microsoft is constantly deprecating UI frameworks, and it's not convenient at all to write local apps. It's only JUST NOW we have truly portable UI frameworks. And it's only because of the Web.
      - VyseofArcadia 2y ago
        QT has been around for decades. So has GTK. Bindings for whatever language you could possibly want. Runs on whatever OS you want. We've had "truly portable" UI frameworks since the late 90s. This has not been an issue for my entire adult life. 20 years ago, I was using desktop applications that ran on Mac OS X, Windows, and *nix with no modifications. They were written in Python, used GTK, and just worked. Web apps are popular because 1) people don't like installing things anymore for some reason and 2) it's easier to justify a subscription pricing model.
        consteval 2y ago
        Even those are not portable because they don't target the #1 personal computer in use - smart phones.
      - Vampiero 2y ago
        The only thing that defines portability is everyone adhering to the same standards. You say that the web is portable, but really, only Google's vision for the web is relevant, seeing how they have the final say in how the standards are implemented and evolved. So it's basically another walled garden, only much bigger and not constrained to the CPU architecture and OS kernel. Chromium IS a platform. And indeed many applications that do work on Chrome don't work on Firefox. So we're pretty much back where we started, but the problem is harder to see because Chrome has such a monopoly over browsers that for most intents and purposes, and for most devs, it's the only platform that exists. Everyone is good at multiplat when there's only one plat.
    - jauntywundrkind 2y ago

dkersten 2y ago

That’s because windows is loaded with trash. You can easily run desktop Linux with 4 GB or RAM, and people have been doing it for decades.

VyseofArcadia 2y ago

But the browser is running in that gigantic special OS. It's not like the OS magically disappears.

jauntywundrkind 2y ago
I've already mentioned ChromeOS as one counter-example. SerenityOS and Ladybird browser forked but until recently had a lot of overlap. LG's WebOS is used on a range of devices, derived from the Palm Pre WebOS released in 2009. The gigantic special OS is baggage which already has been cut loose numberous times. Yes you can run some fine light Linux OS'es in 4GB but man, having done the desktop install for gnome or kde, they are not small at all, even if their runtime is ok. And most users will then go open a web browser anyways. It's unclear to me why people clutch to the legacy native app world, why this other not-connected mode of computing has such persistent adherency to it. The web ran a fine mobile OS in 2009; Palm Pre rocked. It could today.
- VyseofArcadia 2y ago
  I for one don't want to use web apps. I want the speed, convenience, and availability of native apps. I want to use applications that work if the internet isn't. I want to use applications that store my data locally. I want to use unglamorous applications that just work and use a native GUI toolkit instead of torturing a poor, overburdened document display engine into pretending it's a sane place for apps to run. Not to mention, from the perspective of a developer, the relative simplicity of native apps. Why should I jump through all the hoops of distributed computing to, for example, edit a document in a WYSIWYG editor? This is something I could do comfortably on a Packard Bell in 1992.
  - consteval 2y ago
    The Web is portable, operating systems are not. Windows and Mac, being short-sighted, did this to themselves. Nobody can agree on anything, Microsoft is constantly deprecating UI frameworks, and it's not convenient at all to write local apps. It's only JUST NOW we have truly portable UI frameworks. And it's only because of the Web.
    - VyseofArcadia 2y ago
      QT has been around for decades. So has GTK. Bindings for whatever language you could possibly want. Runs on whatever OS you want. We've had "truly portable" UI frameworks since the late 90s. This has not been an issue for my entire adult life. 20 years ago, I was using desktop applications that ran on Mac OS X, Windows, and *nix with no modifications. They were written in Python, used GTK, and just worked. Web apps are popular because 1) people don't like installing things anymore for some reason and 2) it's easier to justify a subscription pricing model.
      - consteval 2y ago
        Even those are not portable because they don't target the #1 personal computer in use - smart phones.
    - Vampiero 2y ago
      The only thing that defines portability is everyone adhering to the same standards. You say that the web is portable, but really, only Google's vision for the web is relevant, seeing how they have the final say in how the standards are implemented and evolved. So it's basically another walled garden, only much bigger and not constrained to the CPU architecture and OS kernel. Chromium IS a platform. And indeed many applications that do work on Chrome don't work on Firefox. So we're pretty much back where we started, but the problem is harder to see because Chrome has such a monopoly over browsers that for most intents and purposes, and for most devs, it's the only platform that exists. Everyone is good at multiplat when there's only one plat.
  - jauntywundrkind 2y ago