[yesimahuman]

This is the entire reason Electron is so popular, and generally users love these apps and don't care about whether apps use native OS controls. This is the same approach Capacitor takes for mobile. Being able to use your existing frontend skills and access the existing web dev market is really compelling.

[viktorcode]

Users love functionality provided by those apps, not the fact they were made with Electron for business reason.

People love Discord. On a desktop they have no choice but to use its Electron client. Some people love Skype, but I guess not one of them wanted for native Skype to migrate to Electron. The list goes on.

Electron app developers are dime a dozen, comparing to native app developers. That's the biggest driver behind Electron popularity: business decision.

[snazz]

Linux users are also super happy they're not left out of using Electron apps. If Discord were to write a native app, they might only include Windows and macOS support—or even omit Mac support altogether.

[stu2b50]

Yes, I personally am happy that Spotify is an electron app. Considering that the Linux binary is maintained by volunteers at the company I'm pretty sure it just wouldn't exist otherwise.

[OJFord]

> People love Discord. On a desktop they have no choice but to use its Electron client

These are just the last few results for `yay -Ss discord`:

    aur/purple-discord-git v0.0.r637.d47f0bc-1 (+13 0.24)
        A libpurple/Pidgin plugin for Discord.
    aur/ripcord 0.4.27-1 (+20 0.66)
        Qt-based Discord and Slack client
    aur/discord-canary 0.0.115-1 (+29 2.70)
        All-in-one voice and text chat for gamers that's free and secure.
    aur/discord_arch_electron 0.0.12-4 (+46 17.96)
        Discord (popular voice + video app) using the system provided electron for increased security and performance
    community/discord 0.0.12-2 (50.8 MiB 173.6 MiB) (Installed)
        All-in-one voice and text chat for gamers that's free and secure.

[krebs_liebhaber]

I've used a few alternative Discord frontends, both GUI and terminal-based.

To put it frankly: they're all flaming heaps of dog shit.

[Cu3PO42]

The ToS explicitly forbid usage of third-party clients and people have been banned over this issue. Some people may be fine with taking this risk, but I also absolutely understand not wanting to deal with it. Personally, I fall in the latter category, so I mostly have the web client open in a pinned tab.

[OJFord]

Oh fair enough, I didn't know. (As you can see from my listing, I'm using the official one. But just because 'meh, whatever, it's ok, I don't care' rather than because I didn't like the others or knew about the terms prohibiting it.)

[tumult]

Can you show where in the ToS it says third-party clients are forbidden? (It doesn't)