Why Remotion is a native macOS app, not Electron

Re:Why Remotion is a native macOS app, not Electron by smoldesu on Friday April 08, 2022 @11:18AM (#30958233)

Flathub is it's own can of worms, as is Flatpak. There's a number of "next-gen" Linux users who love to demonize people who are critical of new tech like Wayland, GNOME and the like, but I'm the most critical towards Flatpak. Linux doesn't need more hack-y ways to get bad software running: we need more robust ways to get software running well. Flatpak is a shotgun approach to getting an app working, where someone said "your app doesn't run? let's just containerize it!"

Needless to say, this is not a great idea in concept, practice, or it's current execution.

I think a much better idea would have been to copy what NixOS does. Yes, your developers have to do a little more work, but you can finally have reliable builds, fix your dependency graph, and actually run your software natively. I'd love for a more uniform "AppImage" style of installation, but Flatpak is definitely not it. Too many sharp edges.

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Re:Why Remotion is a native macOS app, not Electron by codedokode on Friday April 08, 2022 @12:39PM (#30959344)

NixOS might solve dependency issues but it doesn't provide isolation. Currently in a one-user system every app has access to all of user's data and hardware serial numbers. And Linux was not built with a principle of minimum privileges in mind, so for example a PDF viewer can read browser cookies or stored passwords.

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Re:Why Remotion is a native macOS app, not Electron by smoldesu on Friday April 08, 2022 @02:11PM (#30960571)

This is a problem that also exists in many Flatpaks: plenty of applications get carte-blanche access to the OS filesystem, and "breaking out" with symlinks or chained attacks has proven trivial over the years. There are so many of these exploits that they simply stopped patching them after a certain point. Isolation is much better provided by other tools like Firejail.

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Re:Why Remotion is a native macOS app, not Electron by zozbot234 on Friday April 08, 2022 @12:09PM (#30958976)

Containers are a native technology in Linux. The issue with Flatpak is that it comes with its own bundles for underlying desktop components that add some duplication and overhead (in memory use and disk space) compared to what's provided out of the box, but that's a requirement if you want genuinely portable applications.

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Re:Why Remotion is a native macOS app, not Electron by criddell on Friday April 08, 2022 @12:18PM (#30959069)

Which points to the root problem - unlike macOS and Windows, Linux has no native GUI. Ultimately, I don't think the options that you get with Linux help it.

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Re:Why Remotion is a native macOS app, not Electron by deno on Friday April 08, 2022 @02:25PM (#30960736)

Linux is a kernel—like NT or Darwin. Better comparison is with KDE and GNOME and they both have native UI toolkits as well as look&feel and design guidelines. Only major Linux-based system without native UI is Chrome OS, but that’s rather intentional.

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