Electron is the only cross platform gui toolkit…
If you ignore QT, GTK and everything else.
I’m so glad that Microsoft makes an awesome cross platfor— wait, no, but they contribute code to— hmmm … Hey, what does Microsoft do to make apps more portable again?
The real reasons often are:
- They want be able to hire much cheaper webdevs instead of software devs.
- Electron has a lot of built-in data collecting metrics, which they urgently need for creating a real-life KITT.
- Easy live embedding of content. Sure you can add your own solution, in fact I created ETML as a solution for this problem for my engine, all without any support for nasty scripting languages or convoluted stylesheets (style-inheritance in CSS turned me off from webdev even more than JS did). At best, it can be used for things like embedding videos on Discord, because no one else thought some universal approach, let alone one that disallows proprietary players. At worst, it’s being used for ads.
Also a lot of Windows-only apps are Electron apps, only because the manufacturer wants to go “fuck you”, even putting protections into the code just in case you wanted to run it on Linux.
EDIT: Forgot the “live embeds” reason.
Also works on mobile easier, just change some CSS
one of the funniest (and sadly accurate) things i’ve heard said about linux backwards-compatibility is that its most stable API is Win32. you can run really old windows software on wine because they support stuff even windows doesn’t anymore.
of course this is because the expectation is that you can just recompile old software to work on new systems, which is not really a thing on window.s
The most stable system is one that is out of support. No updates == No breakage! 😄
It’s very amusing to imagine devs carefully watching for an EOL/EOS date and starting to build software only after
I think this is the point of Debian stable, and also why some devs hate Debian stable.
It’s so portable! With maximal efforts we support both windows 7, windows 8.1 (but not 8.0), windiws 10 and soon Windows 11 !!!
/s
Flatpak
AppImage
SnapHell, let’s not forget
Python Perl
Java
POSIXThe first 3 are Linux only. It’s irrelevant.
.net
.net cli apps are cross platform and can be portable :p
Gui in .net isnt fully cross platform ( maui is everything except linux ) but frameworks like avalonia ( .net ) and imgui fix all that :')@DacoTaco @MoogleMaestro there is a port of mono winforms implementation to modern dotnet and it’s really works:
https://github.com/DanielVanNoord/System.Windows.FormsWinforms of all things haha. Eeuw xD
But thats flipping awesome and i love it! I know xamarin was wpf being cross platform with mono, but thats a dead horse thanks to microsoft haha@DacoTaco Yes, it’s Microsoft decided to kill classic win32 widgets and any XAML support in Mono, forcing new WinRT platform and not providing any GUI support in netcore. It’s sad that nobody made some crossplatform WPF implementation for modern dotnet, Maui is not incompatible with existing source code, IIRC
It’s sad that nobody made some crossplatform WPF implementation for modern dotnet
That’s basically Avalonia UI.
I believe Uno Platform is similar, but less of a WPF variant, and closer to Xamarin or MAUI in the style of Xaml that they use.
@hdsrob
>That’s basically Avalonia UI.
no, avalonia cannot help you run existing applications. Also. Avalonia is a crap, taking minutes to parse xml crap on poor hardware
Yes, there are many implementaion of WPF-like UI, but no implementation of existing Windows UI.
mono’s winforms allows you run existing winforms apps without single line change or even without recompiling (just replace related System.Windows.* assembies)
Avalon is actually xaml and cross platform. Personally id rather have a razor format of gui code, but xaml is a good second. Its basically what maui was suppose to be
Does not MAUI compile to Linux, just that you need to compile on Windows?
Nope. The ui framework doesnt support linux at all. None of its cross platform claases and enums have linux. Its stupid because .net and aspcore just work on linux…
https://github.com/dotnet/maui
Android, iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and Windows
Everything but Linux, that’s funny.
I look at MAUI a year or so ago and IIRC, “official” Linux support was made by the community.
Lazarus gang, this is your chance!
GTK is not accessible anywhere other than Linux and is therefore not a serious option outside of Linux.
that’s a lot of words to basically say “i’m a fucking idiot”.
Meanwhile Microsoft makes the start menu with React
I try not to let considerations get in the way of doing great work.
That is the most punchable response I’ve seen in a while.
When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
I feel like that reply would have fit better one comment level higher.
Very possibly. Oh well…
“… And that is how I used React as a database language.”
~me presenting at a conference in 2026
Punchable is a bit far, probably wanna tone it down a bit, big guy.
Just kidding, but it’s only funny and also is it this guys fault?
I don’t even know if it’s true, but in any case, the guy who tasked a react (native) developer on the start menu is responsible (not the developer).
Example: If I managed a product and hired a python developer and told them to do x, they would likely use python, right? (In this scenario, It is I the manager wjo failed everyone, not the developer).
Also the other commenter is correct. It’s like the common saying “use the right tool for the job”. The saying doesn’t make sense, because the right tool is always the one you know how to use…
Punchable is a bit far
Didn’t mean that literally 😁 I just thought it was funny to describe a written response as punchable. But the response was annoying.
It might not be the developer’s fault, but him practically defending the choice by completely dodging the performance aspect is irresponsible to me. It’s like he’s ashamed to discuss it. Or doesn’t have the knowledge to?
A good developer should speak up and say that they might not have the skill set required for the task. That’s my opinion. Either that or learn the ropes but flag for extra time needed.
the right tool is always the one you know how to use…
100% disagree. There are more suitable tools for certain jobs.
Hello I am looking for a job as a surgeon. Okay what tools do you know? Jackhammer. That’s the only one you know? Yup. Mmkay then that’s the right tool for surgery in your case, can you start Monday?
🫠
Imagine someone using Java to write a program that just runs several other commands in sequence. That should really be a script, and the developer should learn a sufficiently suitable shell scripting language.
But yeah, ultimately I agree, it’s not his “fault”. Especially if he flagged this to be something a bit out of the ordinary, and his manager(?) insisted. Then it’s 100% not the guy’s fault, for sure ong.
No way that’s real. Tell me it’s not real
Probably, but only because at this point I’m fairly certain reality itself must be a parody of something.
“I am a react developer”
I thought we are supposed to be language-agnostic after 3rd project.
In the era of tech evangelists? People pick 1 technology branch and make it their entire personality
That’s still a stupid reason. I’m a .NET & MSSQL developer primarily, I’m not gonna shove C# in every project I write if it doesn’t makes sense.
Two more projects to go, then!
This is what’s wrong. Distilled.
Well, at least it’s React Native, seemingly. Also from what I’ve heard it’s only one section like rendering results from the web or some shit like that.
Wow, that’s some serious misinformation.
Tell me you have no idea how software development works without saying it…
I read it twice and it felt like word salad.
Tbh, it’s not entirely wrong, which is the reason why it works so well as rage bait.
It’s really not about Linux, but it is about supporting anything and everything out there with a single app. Use Electron and you can have the same app running on Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS, your car, your game console, your smart fridge and in a website.
Of course the result sucks, but if you can cut development effort into a fraction while also supporting systems that you would have never supported otherwise, that’s not a bad deal for businesses.
Show me how you never programmed anything without telling me
Software should be maintained, not built and forgotten about. Windows encourages the latter, which is just straight up bad practice
Fairly large chunks of Windows code are examples of the latter, in fact.
Some things should be replaced or updated to improve performance. However, I don’t think Windows has ever done anything of the sort, I certainly can’t think of any examples since Vista.
No, Windows encourages backwards compatibility, which tends to cause code to e forgotten about.
(Apple as a platform is so closed that it couldn’t be influenced by this utter crap and the developers can use the OS native API’s.)
A hidden gem of stupidity and nonsense in the already pretty dumb tirade.
This is what too much windows does to your brain kids.
They must really like the taste of leather.
No.
They like the texture of leather.
Its the polish that provides the taste.
But once you read his words he’s got a foot in the door. Then he’s harder to ignore.
So maybe it’s harder to ignore fools on social media. Which would make social media a kind of fool-enhancer.
I guess this is where blocking comes in. But that seems drastic.
Blocking is severe, but boy is my feed clean of morons (I think I’ve only blocked like 30 people on Lemmy).
You gotta try it. Very satisfying to click ‘read all’ on your inbox now and then to clear out notifications for new (hidden) messages from trolls you’ve blocked.
what a great way to create a set of echochambers with schizo worldviews
This is such a hilariously bad take. I like how “I can’t use Win32 on Linux” morphed into “re-write the whole app in Javascript just so I can use Electron.”
Meanwhile, Wine and QT are like: “am I a joke to you?”
I’ll add that (IMO) a lot of applications are becoming increasingly malicious, although less-so in the desktop space. I’m happy that devs like this are forced to quasi-sandbox their crap into a browser. Actually, if anyone knows how to crack into an Electron app in order to restore local plugins, user-scripts, and sandbox security controls, let me know. Or just liberate the guts into a local web app instead so I can use a real browser? This trend could be very useful for local security if those features become available.
I can code in C on all 3 (more if you include BSDs). You would not believe how amazing my skills are to avoid platform specific dependencies in a language that predates all these OS.
When I grow up I want to be like you
I only just realized the Proton and Electron naming schemes lol
Electron was developed to make Atom.
Wow. I didn’t realize this until you pointed it out. Thanks. TIL.
Add Lepton to the list!
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The user land API/ABI is stable to a fault in Linux. The kernel API/ABI is unstable.
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Companies are cheap. They hired web devs then tasked them with building a desktop application rather then hiring people to write native apps. They had a hammer and used it to fix every problem they had.
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macOS is just as affected by electron apps as a Linux is.
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Electron is horrible, but it does bring apps to many an OS once Chromium is ported.
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Open protocols or open APIs from the company would fix the non-native app problem.
The user land API/ABI is stable to a fault in Linux. The kernel API/ABI is unstable
It’s the other way around. The kernel API stable to a fault, the kernel ABI isn’t. If your application only relies on the kernel API you won’t have many compatibility issues. If you rely on userland stuff such as C++ stdlib, GTK, QT, Python, … Good luck.
I wasn’t clear and that seems to have cause some confusion. I was talking about the Linux kernel itself, and only the Linux kernel.
There are two sides to the Linux kernel: internal exposed to drivers and such, external syscalls exposed to the public. That’s what I was talking about.
All bets are off with 3rd party software. That’s just a general problem in software development. It’s not specific to Linux, and it’s why vendoring libraries is recommended.
This is why all the 3rd party software is frozen at a point-in-time with fixes backported in distros like Debian or RHEL. It fixes the problems of devs being mercurial. The distro is the SDK. It creates a stable base, and it works rather well.
Unfortunately, most software relies on libc and a compiler. Both of which can be problems, and both of which are external to the Linux kernel. There’s not much which relies on only kernel syscalls.
But the Electron Apps are resource intensive, namely RAM.
Well, RAM is dirt cheap anyways. /S
Edit: I bought this one for 180 in another site just a few months ago. It now costs as much what I paid for RAM, CPU + MOBO. Dodged a bullet not waiting for the black Friday “deals”
Further, if you get code into the kernel, anyone who breaks it needs to fix it. So it seems to me it’s only a problem if you’re trying to do something like maintain a proprietary driver without putting it into the kernel? Or something to that effect?
Basically. Out-of-tree drivers are annoying without an LTS kernel.
There are also out-of-tree drivers which don’t get mainlined for one reason or another even though they are FOSS. OpenZFS has this problem, and now so does bcachefs.
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This is not even mental gymnastics at that point.
Mental… contortionist?
What kind of shit for brains asshole is still defending Windows in 2025?
And what kind of slavering mouth-breathing teoglodyte doesn’t understand that Hannah Montana Linux negates all of these issues, will suck your dixk without hesitation, and lets you read news from four days from now.
Lololol
He’s a magician, because reading this, I aged 10 years and grew a metastatic tumor.
