ELECTRON: Why people HATE it, why developers USE it

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#linux #electron #webdevelopment

00:00 Introduction
00:33 Get a free study on open source best practices
01:38 How electrons work
02:47 Why developers like Electron
06:37 System integration is not good
10:15 Disk usage and performance
13:03 Linux needs Electron
14:54 Get a laptop or desktop with Linux out of the box
16:00 Support the channel

Discord issues with Electron: https://theevilskeleton.gitlab.io/2022/05/29/a-letter-to-discord-for-not-supporting-the-linux-desktop.html

OMGUbuntu Electron apps list: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2019/02/best-electron-apps

So what exactly is an electron?

electron is a framework that allows developers to build applications using web technologies such as JavaScript, HTML or CSS. It is open source and cross-platform, meaning apps built with electron run on Windows, Mac and Linux.
directly within the app instead of accessing it via the Internet.

So why do developers choose the electron route?

Developing apps using native technologies on all platforms is time-consuming and requires different skills and knowledge for each platform, so you need more developers, more time, and more money.

With Electron you can develop ONCE.

Second reason: Debugging code for web technologies like JavaScript is quite easy compared to simpler languages like C, C++ or Objective C. JavaScript is interpreted line by line, so it is much easier to spot the error.

Another reason is that Electron apps are easy to update automatically: all you need to do is make sure your Electron app detects when your site's code has changed, download the new files to your computer, and quickly reload the page, and you're up to date.

But Electron also has a number of problems.

First, Electron doesn't really integrate well with the operating system: it's just a web browser that displays a website stored on your computer, rather than on a server. This means that if Electron doesn't support a particular feature of your operating system, the apps that use Electron won't support it.

A bigger problem, however, is the fact that developers often don't update the Electron base, or don't update it often enough. Electron, which uses CHromium, needs to be as up-to-date as any web browser you use every day to ensure security holes are fixed.

That's often not the case. And it gets worse when you consider operating system integration. One example is Discord on Linux. It uses an older version of Electron that doesn't support Wayland very well. Electron offers Wayland support, and good support at that, but Discord deprives its users of that support by not updating the version of Electron they use.

And then there's the performance and resource consumption. Since Electron apps contain basically the entire Chromium codebase, they aren't small. Discord, for example, weighs more than 700MB after installation. Almost a gigabyte. Even the simplest Hello World application would need about 100MB just to display one line of text.

And there are performance implications: Chromium is not a lightweight browser at all. Discord, on the other hand, uses about 480 MB on my system with all its processes. And this RAM consumption is the same whether the app is minimized to the taskbar or fully open. GIMP uses 500 MB when opening a new blank document.

And yet, specifically for us Linux users, Electron means that we get applications on Linux that we wouldn't have had otherwise.