Ask HN: Would a web technology only Linux Desktop UI be feasible?
2 by starbugs | 0 comments on Hacker News.
Whether you like it or not, I think we're in the middle of a transition of cross-platform software to the web stack. Electron apps have enabled Linux as a desktop platform for many use cases. And while they have drawbacks, I think this trend will only gain momentum in the future. I see web technologies pretty much as the remaining subset of tech that is not (yet) controlled by a single entity with commercial interests and monopolistic tendencies. Wouldn't it make sense to go all in with what we have now and create a new kind of desktop OS that is web first (or only) in terms of UI? An Electron app could easily be retrofitted to run in an environment like this and web content could become a first class citizen in a desktop environment. This would also eliminate one of the primary concerns with Electron, namely that each app has to carry its own instance of Chrome with it. The browser engine could pretty much be standardized and there wouldn't be a need for this anymore. Backends could run securely, in a containerized environment. I know there's Chrome OS, but what I am talking about is more like an open alternative that doesn't rely on the cloud so much and still allows you to build full-blown native backends. Just the frontend and window server would be HTML5 only and embrace modern web technologies.
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