[vetinari]

Native widgets libraries were historically those, who were only one that knew, how to talk to the display server. So if you wanted to write another widget library, you had to link to them anyway, to use them as a proxy. That's how Qt, for example, runs on Windows or Mac, using the old win32 api or Cocoa.

But meanwhile, the OS vendors got creative and pumped out a bunch of new, _more modern_ libraries, which have abilities that the old, "system" ones do not have. You want Acrylic design on Windows? Better be satisfied with WinUI -- which, in v3 is the recommended way to write native applications by the platform owner, and which is decoupled from system releases and from Windows SDK.

Electron apps are coming from any shop, that want to throw together some installable, locally running app and figured out, that paying HTML+CSS devs is cheaper, than paying C++ (or ObjC) ones. Having shorter development time is also something positive. It has nothing to do with Linux shops; there are Electron apps, that could be running on Linux if there was a will, but aren't (Whatsapp), or almost-electron-but-edge_webview-instead (Teams).

[pjmlp]

In 2024, the recomend ways to write GUIs in Windows are Win32 (your native widgets library), exposed by WinForms. WPF has parity with WinUI 3, in recomended way by the platform owner, officially communicated at BUILD 2024.

Doubled down at .NET Conf 2024 during the last week.

Regardless of the GUI framework from Apple, and Microsoft, those are managed bindings to the underlying native APIS (Win32 and Cocoa), which is why they also expose handles to do lowlevel stuff if one so desires, coding like 2000.

Webviews are a different matter, as they don't require shipping Chrome with the application.

It definelty has a lot to do with Linux shops, as they can't be bothered to support GNOME, KDE, Sway, XFCE, or whatever everyone else uses, so Electron it is.

And then they want Mac OS and Windows customers as well.

[vetinari]

> In 2024, the recomend ways to write GUIs in Windows are Win32 (your native widgets library), exposed by WinForms. WPF has parity with WinUI 3, in recomended way by the platform owner, officially communicated at BUILD 2024.

So maybe Microsoft should update their own guides then: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/get-started/?...

| Many apps for Windows are written using Win32, Windows Forms, or UWP. Each of these frameworks is supported and will continue to receive bug, reliability, and security fixes, but varying levels of investment for new features and styles. For more information about these app types see the following tabs.

Yes, in Build 2024, there was backpedaling back to WPF, since WinUI is in terrible shape.

> Webviews are a different matter, as they don't require shipping Chrome with the application.

Electron also doesn't ship Chrome with application; it ships the rendering engine (blink) and javascript engine (v8). Which is exactly the same, as edge webview. Unlike edge webview, they are not dragged in by Microsoft Edge, the browser (so you get it whether you have an use for it or not).

> It definelty has a lot to do with Linux shops, as they can't be bothered to support GNOME, KDE, Sway, XFCE, or whatever everyone else uses, so Electron it is.

So how do you imagine such support would look like? I know a thing or two about development on linux, but I have no idea what would supporting XFCE or Sway explicitly in an app would involve. Unless you hyperbolize, right?

The only real decision would be choosing Gtk or Qt; the desktop environments have no real impact on your app and with Qt, you are getting the multiplatform support, that is supposedly behind the electron usage of those linux shops.

Also, what exactly are those linux shops, that target multiplatform by using electron? Is it like Cisco? Or Meta? Maybe Bitwarden? Discord? Figma? Microsoft (skype, vscode)?