Show HN: Electrino, a featherweight API-compatible alternative to Electron

Re:Show HN: Electrino, a featherweight API-compatible altern... by pavlov on Wednesday May 03, 2017 @07:17PM (#14261106)

Using the system web runtime does reduce the app's memory usage too, not just the on-disk size.

The system runtime is loaded just once (and is probably already in active memory), whereas each Electron app loads its own copy of Chromium.

For large apps, it won't make a huge difference. I'm absolutely not saying Atom or Spotify should switch away from Electron... The use case I had in mind for Electrino is more about small utilities, desktop widgets, that kind of thing.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Electrino, a featherweight API-compatible altern... by fox8091 on Thursday May 04, 2017 @11:19AM (#14265445)

Imho, it will make a big difference for large apps too, especially on CPU usage. Chromium is what takes up the majority of CPU time, so by reducing it to a very small replacement, it should help.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Electrino, a featherweight API-compatible altern... by ricardobeat on Thursday May 04, 2017 @05:21PM (#14268947)

Have you tested that? In my experience using a system webview actually consumes more resources than Electron, and is noticeably slower, at least in OSX/WebKit.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Electrino, a featherweight API-compatible altern... by pavlov on Thursday May 04, 2017 @06:40PM (#14269514)

I did do trivial tests. The Electrino "Hello World" launches faster and consumes about 70% less memory than the Electron one.

For complex apps, I imagine the picture can be very different. The use case I see for the Electrino approach is small apps that are constantly loaded. Big productivity-style apps are better served by Electron.

[ Parent | on HN ]