760
RAM prices soar, but popular Windows 11 apps are using more RAM due to Electron, Web components
(www.windowslatest.com)
this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2025
760 points (98.2% liked)
Technology
77571 readers
5634 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
If there's any silver lining to this, perhaps we can get a renewed interest in efficient open-source software designed to work well on older hardware, and less e-waste.
Morgan Freeman: ”They couldn’t”
I wish we could, but it’s tough to maintain optimism in the face of these sociopathic corporations’ seemingly ever-growing power
Open source developers are just like you and me. They'll get fed up with the bullshit and start developing things they need with the resources they have, just like they've always done.
It's always been there, why is there so many great Open Source Software out there ? Even Linus started the linux kernel because he could not afford Unix.
If there’s any silver lining to this, fuck JavaScript, fuck JavaScript wrappers and fuck all people picked JavaScript for the programming language of anything cross-platform.
It’s unbelievable I would need 6 gbs of RAM to say a simple “hello” to my friends. It used to take 300kb with IRC.
that has very little to do with JavaScript though 🤷♂️
Maybe not Javascript as a language, but the framework it requires to get applications written with it running, which is a lot. And in a roundabout way, it kinda has a little to do with the language itself, as the reason electron got so popular in the first place is because it catered to web developers who either couldn't be bothered or couldn't figure out proper desktop app devlopment, so they went with the easy short-term path. And Javascript kinda is an easy language to pick up and write simple.projects in - now, maintaining more complex applications with it is another story.,.
It has less to do with JavaScript as most people tend to think IMO. JavaScript does not require Electron to exist, it's rather the other way around. The fact that Electron ships a whole browser is the culprit and you could even argue that V8 is bloated as well, though I'm not sure how efficient it is built and how much size it takes. Browsers historically need to support so much legacy stuff which is another main factor for its size. I really hope for stuff like Tauri or Servo to gain traction.
Not really, no. It's very compact compared to Python, Java or most anything in the same league. A compiled program would be smaller, of course, and Lua is minuscule next to anything — but otherwise V8 is small and fast. Iirc Node.js takes something like 30 MB out of the box, including its modules and libraries.
Even Electron apps aren't necessarily ram hoarders: Stretchly, which is a break reminder and thus needs to always run in the background, takes something like 20 or 40 MB of memory.
"It sounds like you want low-end devices to be turned into thin clients for cloud-based operating systems. Do I have that right?"
I’d love to see games do this because they are clearly not being optimized. Can’t wait to see that not happen.
Good thing, I’m happy with retro games and the occasional indie.
3/5 of the way through 100% Final Fantasy II. Figure by the time I catch up to modern final fantasy either hardware will be better again or people will optimize again. Either way I got time
US 2 or JP 2?
US 2 is so good, but the late game seeed to have a difficulty spike so I never finished it.
I'm doing the pixel remasters which I think are based more on original JP. I know some purists look down on them but I think overall they're a solid version.
I haven’t played them myself, but I think they look cool.
If someone wants to be a purist, let them get an original system and a crt. Otherwise, they can just shut up about.
Why would you do that when you can pull 50 JavaScript libraries and wrap it in Electron?
That'll be 800€ and all change you own.
there are a shit ton alternatives. Too bad there are more average developers
Why spend time making better software when the end user can just buy better hardware!
That's been the thinking for the last couple of decades at least. But it can't continue if people can't afford new hardware.
That just opens the market for subscription hardware. You will own nothing and you will be happy.
Hardware doesnt need to get more powerful either. If we actually harnessed it, we have what we need already.