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Comment by alexandernst | Hacker News Reader

How is Deskgap lightweighter than Electron if, at the end of the day, it's using the browser on my OS (which, let's assume, is Chrome)?

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Because if it uses the same browser binary as your other web apps (tabs or other DeskGap apps), the OS can share memory between them. Not possible with electron since every app bundles its own Chromium binary.

That is incorrect. Programs can't share memory just because they've been launched from the same binary.

This is just reusing a DLL and saving disk space thanks to it.

Pretty sure they can on Linux at least.

You are confusing data memory and code memory.

I am not, actually I am pointing out that the comment I replied to does.

Both code memory and data memory will be shared by any modern OS. The code memory will of course be shared since it's the same, and the data memory will be shared until modified. Then that memory page will be copied for the process that changed it (check out copy-on-write).

And then there's disk memory, which isn't as important IMO but still it will of course be smaller since you don't ship the whole browser stack for each application.

Shared memory is "a method of conserving memory space by directing accesses to what would ordinarily be copies of a piece of data to a single instance instead, by using virtual memory mappings or with explicit support of the program in question. This is most often used for shared libraries and for Execute in place (XIP)" according to Wikipedia.

I don't understand why you are talking about launching binaries. The entire point of this approach is to not launch a separate browser instance.

You are patently wrong. The primary advantage of DLLs is shared memory usage:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/dlls/advant...

Of course they can. This is what OS engineers have spent decades thinking about and optimizing. And then stuff like Electron appears and circumvents all those optimizations. Which is the main reason I dislike it.

Sure, but with sandboxing and technologies such as Firefox Containers, containers in general (such as Docker), and VMs (together with a secure enclave such as utilized in Qubes) it can all be thrown in the trash bin. Its just a matter of time until that's the norm. iOS is already on top of doing sandboxing well.

Are you claiming that when two apps on iOS use a webview, there are 2 copies of the system library implementing the webview in memory?

If not, why are you appealing to iOS to help make your case?

No it would not be. Hopefully Electron will actually do this in some day.

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