[Sohcahtoa82]

The difference is that iOS and Android will kill apps as it sees fit. People come to expect that and know that reopening their reddit reader after a few hours, it might not be at the same state they left it.

On a desktop, this is different. You have to explicitly close programs. Because of this, it becomes important to know what's running and what isn't.

[zozbot234]

> The difference is that iOS and Android will kill apps as it sees fit.

Only because iOS and Android are wasting RAM (the former to a lesser extent, but iOS devices also have less RAM to begin with!) and running with zero swap space. (And the latter point in turn is due to the abysmal, bottom-of-the-barrel quality of phone eMMC storage.) This is not progress, it's just the OOM reaper being overactive for lack of a better option.

[bsder]

> and running with zero swap space. (And the latter point in turn is due to the abysmal, bottom-of-the-barrel quality of phone eMMC storage.) This is not progress, it's just the OOM reaper being overactive for lack of a better option.

And all this grief could be avoided by Linux actually allocating memory when its supposed to as opposed to just saying "Sure!" and then sometime later killing completely random programs when someone actually attempts to use memory they requested.

[hombre_fatal]

I wish I had more control over the mobile experience though. For example, my run-tracker apps will get closed and stop tracking me if I open too many apps during my run while leaving Spotify, Youtube, and my podcast apps open.

I'd like to be able to somehow pin the run-tracker as top priority. Sucks to realize after a run or bike ride that it stopped recording 20min into it.

[Asooka]

Your run tracker should have a proper background service to make that not happen, or a persistent notification widget. If it is still happening, look around your power saving options to exempt it from being killed due to "excessive power usage" when in the background.

[sedatk]

Windows Store apps follow the same semantics. When you close them, they are not unloaded from the memory and they restore their state at the startup even if you kill them. The "green leaves" next to the process name in Task Manager means that the app is suspended, but not killed, despite that it isn't open anymore.