Correct me if I am wrong but wouldn't the best move forward just be supporting and tuning https://electron.atom.io to make it more performant and supported on linux? Yes it is a battery killer, but I can see it being better if everyone put their tasks to making that a non issue.
edit: why the down votes? This is a platform agnostic framework. I understand the performance is bad, but the one reason that linux doesn't have the same applications as windows and OSX is the window manager. A lot of amazing apps have been created using electron which has allowed people to even remotely think about moving over.
It seems like this would end up being very similar to Chrome OS. Presumably people are still using a "real" desktop instead of Chrome OS because they do not want this HTML+JS-based future.
Browser-based apps still kinda suck. Battery-wise, UI-wise in terms of integration, accessibility-wise, etc. And they're a huge step down in programming language availability vs native apps.
Exactly. If using Linux means getting stuck with apps that are horrifically slow and your battery life is awful, whereas just switching to Mac or Windows eliminates these problems, that's not going to make Linux a very attractive alternative.
Most languages have the option to compiling to JS, all I am suggesting is that electron be the framework that people target. Having language support is possible by extending that framework.
Transpiling just makes things more complicated. You have to know your own language, the target language and how all the idiosyncrasies are converted between the two. I delivers the worst of every world.
Programming languages or platforms aren't the issue. Software packaging and distribution is. Porting is easy. Getting your software to users is hard.
Look at the Minecraft pocket edition (and its Windows 10 respin), one of the devs said that it would be trivial to port that to desktop Linux but they would have to set up their own payment and distribution system, which just isn't worth it for that tiny market.
Github, Gitlab, Bitbucket, it would be great if these platforms had an option to allow non-technically users to install software from them. It would eliminate the need for developers to push to a software platform.
> Fixing this is probably difficult to impossible.
It is absolutely possible to make a browser engine-based shell that is more efficient than Electron is. Electron has the wackiest setup imaginable, mashing together Node and Chromium, with two versions of V8 to boot.
The issue is that electron is running a new chromium process for each application. This could be fixed easily sharing that process and making chromium more resource friendly.
And go back to the 80's where one app crashing can take down the whole system? No thanks. Apps would be able to overwrite each others memory then too, you'd get the full Amiga experience.
edit: why the down votes? This is a platform agnostic framework. I understand the performance is bad, but the one reason that linux doesn't have the same applications as windows and OSX is the window manager. A lot of amazing apps have been created using electron which has allowed people to even remotely think about moving over.