[digisign]

I've had a linux desktop/laptop for twenty years now and never used an Electon app to my knowledge, so don't care either way. Just curious why both of you seem to think they are required? The "apps" mentioned so far work fine in a browser, or have native alternatives.

[horsawlarway]

For the most part - I agree that electron apps are also usable in the browser, a few of them struggle with the sandboxing that browsers place around file system access.

Ex: Yes, you can run vscode in a browser, but it has a lot of caveats, and behaves much more like a remote client.

For others - Just having Electron to target is the reason they work in the browser at all. Skype used to require either a windows vm, or a crappy 3rd party linux client - now it's electron native and also works in the browser, and Teams targeted electron out of the gate, making it browser compatible early (although I wouldn't call teams a shining example of a decent app unless you held me hostage)

Etcher is another example - Yes, with WebUSB, you can flash usb devices in a normal tab, but there's just really no reason to have a server to hit at all - the whole process is client local, and having you download it as a local application just makes more sense all the way around (not to mention, gets offline access for free, rather than having to implement it with a service worker).

Another reason to keep them local is that you get a new chromium profile by default. I run discord on a few work machines, but I don't want it to run in the browser profile I use for work, and I'm already juggling 3 other work profiles (dev, staging, qa) and my personal chrome profile - they have a specific set of extensions and settings. It's easier to just treat it like an app if I want it running most of the day - happy to load it in a tab when I'm out and about on other computers, though.