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Many mobile apps just exist to browse a certain web site (HN, Reddit, etc) at which point making a native app makes little sense if you're just copying the design of a site. This also extends to desktop (Spotify, Steam, etc). The problem with Electron (or CEF or QtWeb*) is that it's running an independent rendering engine adding a significant overhead. If you're already running a browser even complex web apps such as a WebGL sculpter[0] add a minimum usage on the session. Of course there's the problem of persistently running a web browser which may lead to high energy consumption.

[0]: https://stephaneginier.com/sculptgl/




Link to a post in this thread that I wrote partially as a response to yours but don't want to duplicate:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27601802

On a whim, I also opened the front page of reddit (again, in my web browser that's already opened) and the tab is taking 140MB fresh.


Is this page resource usage on the browser or the total? Else, you used the browser's (about:performance in Firefox) or you system's task manager to get this figure? If the later, that is exactly what I meant with engine overhead. You should consider that initial figure shared among tabs/apps.


I used about:performance; I'm not stupid. Is there no expectation of good faith here?


Strange. It shows only 1.7MB on FF 89.0 (Linux, x64). That's why I thought you're checking the total memory. Then again the total in there is far smaller than what the system usage is, so this manager is unreliable.


I know we don’t do this here but this made me chuckle. Favoriting this.




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