> It adds a lot of value to Linux and to a lesser extent Mac users: before a electron a lot of apps didn't have a version for these platform at all

What value does _this_ add over a web app?

I've been an exclusive Linux user since college so I'm aware of the disadvantages of app/service unavailability (I remember the dark days of running Netflix in a windows VM that I barely had enough RAM to run...).

But what's the advantage of using the Slack app over a browser tab? This is a sincere question, since enough people reference the benefit of faux-native wrapped webapps that I assume there's some value.

I seem to be the only one in my company who doesn't use Slack's app, and I'm always shocked when I see a colleague's computer freeze and have them say "ugh it's almost definitely the Slack app". I work in autonomous vehicle engineering, so these are _monster_ machines I'm talking about, capable of running the entire car's stack locally. The only advantage I can think of are desktop notifications, but 1) I'm pretty sure browsers support those and 2) is that really worth using an app that's amateurish enough that it freezes your computer regularly?

I'm on Ubuntu and use the Slack app, which never causes any freezes or anything of the like. The advantages is that i know where it is ( in my taskbar and launcher) compared to it being one of my 500 open tabs, and the taskbar icon shows if i have unread notifications or messages. Furthermore, i can use it with multiple workspaces at the same time.

I feel like the push towards PWA where you "appify" those websites rather than running another instance of a full blown browser would be good indeed.

Ah yes, the panel icon. This makes a lot of sense, thank you! My os is _heavily_ customized (i3 + wmctrl + heavy scripting), so I forget sometimes what the standard floating-window workflow looks like and how difficult it can make it to manage and quickly access important windows/tabs.

> It adds a lot of value to Linux and to a lesser extent Mac users: before a electron a lot of apps didn't have a version for these platform at all.

I prefer web versions of those apps on Linux than electron. Sorry, I want to run just one browser and it is not Chrome based one.

And for sure Electron apps don't allow that ease of cross platform development as one thinks, I would argue that it is on the same level as a native app with good abstraction library (see Telegram client source on github).

It is more that they don't want to hire desktop developers (or just ones that want to learn something else than JS).

For an app with no source available publicly, I would much rather have a web app in a sandbox than a "native" app (whether native or electron-style) that I would have to trust.