this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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Depends on the viewpoint. As a software consumer, sure. As a software producer though, not having to deal with with tons of different packaging formats and repositories for different distributions and versions is a blessing.
It wastes resources on the consumer side to free up resources on the developer side, allowing for more time spent on improving the software instead of worrying about millions of different system setup combinations.
Pretty much typical these days. Developers will often use metric tons of middleware hell to avoid writing one function or using native library. What's that, GTK or Qt require few days to learn. Naah, I'll just include whole browser with my application and write interface in HTML/CSS. Who cares about people's configuration, accessibility needs, battery life, screen readers, etc.
There are of course two sides of the story, and you are right that it causes performance/battery life issues. Including a browser does actually improve the situation with screen readers and such.
The big advantage of the "include a browser/large framework" solution is that it allows you to write the application once and use it on web, Linux, Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, some weird TV OS, a game console or someone's car.
Without some middleware you'd be writing 10 different versions and every one would need it's own native libraries that are "just a few days to learn" and "just a few dozen days to master" and only "a few hundred hours to implement and maintain", and the result would be what we had in the 2000s: "Sorry, we do not support Linux."
I'd rather developers don't support Linux than make Electron application and say "there we go, good enough right". Because it's not. When it comes to accessibility, no those applications are not better. You might be thinking their UI is easier to scale and increase contrast but literally none of them respect system theme, colors, font choices.
Some middleware is fine, however blindly importing just about anything is very dangerous and lazy. Cargo cult programming is so widespread am surprised hardware is keeping up with the demand. There's always the right tool for the job and the wrong tool for the job. Just because you can drive nails with a rock, doesn't mean you should, nor you see any carpenter doing it.
Since when is theming aaccessibility? That's customizability.
But you can have your wishes easily. If you prefer no Linux support over an Electron app, just don't install the Electron app and you get the same result.
Consider yourself lucky that you are not visually impaired and need high contrast and/or large themes.
Again, how would not providing any Linux app at all be preferable over an Electron app? How would it lead to you having a better Linux app?
Because it's the easy way out. Just like if Valve's Proton ever gets good enough people will entirely stop making native ports. They will just ell you use Proton and you as a user lose in the long run.
Ok, what's your suggestion? Go back to a world before wine when Linux gaming was Tux Racer?
I much prefer solid, well working games with great performance delivered through Proton than no games at all.
The 90s called, they want their native-purism back.
You can downvote all you like. People will always take easier route, just how IE was default browser for decades just because people didn't have to install it and it was already there.
Easier route = electron app.
Yes, that's the easier route.
Hard disagree. I'd rather run an Electron application than having to side-load Windows for some application I actually need. Also, you don't have to install Electron applications, so if you want you can just pretend they don't support Linux.
Most native Linux apps have absolutely shit keyboard navigation and screen reader support, if they even bothered testing it at all. So yes web apps are far better for accessibility.
I'm sick of purists who don't know they're talking about. If it was up to you there'd be zero growth in Linux and you'd actually be happy with that. Electron exists to put software on multiple OSes at low cost. It's a good thing. App devs are just jealous that they're getting replaced by web and mobile devs, both of whom they've shat on for decades.
Karma's a bitch. It isn't the 90s anymore, the time to move on and learn a worthwhile stack was 15 years ago. If you're so good then surely you can bring your genius level skills to a web team and show them how it's done.
You assumption that I am clueless just shows you have no idea what you are talking about so I'll end up all arguments there. If you wish to prove me wrong, find me one Electron based application which supports high contrast themes and actually took care not to use colors that are problematic to color blindness.
Microsoft Teams has a high contrast mode. Signal and Threema are both high contrast originally. That's all the electron apps I am consciously using.
And all of them natively support scaling up by pressing CTRL plus the + key.
They are actually much better in this regard than most native apps.
Am a developer and I can very much agree on package managers have nasty configuration, but at the same time flatpak is the exact same thing. No different that any other package. Except now you have to learn yet another standard that's even less popular than major ones. You can even claim it's easier, but the fact remains it's not the defacto standard, so you still have to provide other packages as well as flatpak if you wish to do so.
flatpak isn't the same because you only have to learn one packaging format and can distribute to virtually any system out there. I really don't see why you'd also package for every distro individually then. Installing flatpak isn't that hard, it not being "the defacto standard" shouldn't be an issue.
If the system supports flatpak. Yes.
So basically the entire Linux desktop then.
Yep lazy developers! That doesn't care about security!
You aren't owed a native package for whatever OS you're using. In fact, you should be thankful that flatpak exists because the most common alternative is piping wget into shell.
And if you care so much about security, just build your stuff from source. Whether flatpak or apt, at some point you will run third-party code.
-said the person that probably has never worked in their entire life
What do you know about someone on the other side of the keyboard, nothing 🙄
Hope it helps you be annoyed at me because I don't like flatpak and snap.
Why were you so mean to him? Now you made him upset by pointing out how pointless his comment was.