SerenityOS and Ladybird browser forked but until recently had a lot of overlap.
LG's WebOS is used on a range of devices, derived from the Palm Pre WebOS released in 2009.
The gigantic special OS is baggage which already has been cut loose numberous times. Yes you can run some fine light Linux OS'es in 4GB but man, having done the desktop install for gnome or kde, they are not small at all, even if their runtime is ok. And most users will then go open a web browser anyways. It's unclear to me why people clutch to the legacy native app world, why this other not-connected mode of computing has such persistent adherency to it. The web ran a fine mobile OS in 2009; Palm Pre rocked. It could today.
Not to mention, from the perspective of a developer, the relative simplicity of native apps. Why should I jump through all the hoops of distributed computing to, for example, edit a document in a WYSIWYG editor? This is something I could do comfortably on a Packard Bell in 1992.
It's only JUST NOW we have truly portable UI frameworks. And it's only because of the Web.
You say that the web is portable, but really, only Google's vision for the web is relevant, seeing how they have the final say in how the standards are implemented and evolved.
So it's basically another walled garden, only much bigger and not constrained to the CPU architecture and OS kernel.
Chromium IS a platform. And indeed many applications that do work on Chrome don't work on Firefox. So we're pretty much back where we started, but the problem is harder to see because Chrome has such a monopoly over browsers that for most intents and purposes, and for most devs, it's the only platform that exists.
Everyone is good at multiplat when there's only one plat.
Web apps are popular because 1) people don't like installing things anymore for some reason and 2) it's easier to justify a subscription pricing model.
Want an offline app? Possible for a long time, build a local-first app. Don't want to build a client-server system? Fine, build an isolated webapps. There's so many great tools for webdev that get people going fast, that are incomparably quick at throwing something together. It's just bias and ignorance of an old crusty complainy world. This is a diseased view, is reprehensible small minded & aggressively mean, and it's absurd given how much incredibly effort has been poured into making HTML and CSS incredibly capable competent featureful fast systems, for shame: torturing a poor, overburdened document display engine into pretending it's a sane place for apps to run
The web has a somewhat earned reputation for being overwhelmed by ads, which slow things down, but today it feels like most native mobile apps are 60MB+ and also have burdensome slow ads too.
There aren't really any tries to go full in on the web. We have been kind of a second system half measure, for the most part, since Pre WebOS gave up on mobile (since FirefoxOS never really got a chance). Apps have had their day and I'm fine with there being offerings for those with a predeliction for prehistoric relics, but the web deserves a real full go, deserves a chance too, and the old salty grudges and mean spirits shouldn't obstruct the hopeful & the excited who have pioneered some really great tech that has both become the most popular connected ubiquitous tech on the planet, but which is also still largely a second system and not the whole of the thing.
The web people are always hopeful & excited & the native app people are always overbearingly negative nellies, old men yelling at the cloud. Yeah, there's some structural issues of power around the cloud today, but as Molly White's recent XOXO talk says, the web is still the most powerful system that all humanity shares that we can use to enrich ourselves however we might dream, and I for one feel great excitement and energy, that this is the only promise I see right now that shows open potential. (I would be overjoyed to see native apps show new promise but they feel tired & their adherents to be displeasurable & backwards looking) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTaeVVAvk-c
My man, I am not a fossil. I came of age with web apps. But I am someone who has seen both sides. I have worked professionally on both desktop applications and as a full stack web developer, and my informed takeaway is web apps are insane. Web dev is a nightmarish tower of complexity that is antithetical to good engineering practice, and you should only do it if you are working in a problem space that is well and truly web-native.
I try to live by KISS, and nontrivial web apps are not simple. A couple of things to consider:
1. If it is possible to do the same task with a local application, why should I instead do that task with a web app that does everything in a distributed fashion? Unnecessary distributed computing is insane.
2. If it is possible to do the same task with a local application, and as a single application, not client-server, why should I accept the overhead of running it in a browser? Browsers are massive, complex, and resource hungry. Sure, I'll just run my application inside another complex application inside a complex OS. What's another layer? But actually, raw JS, HTML, and CSS are too slow to work with, so I'll add another layer and do it with React. But actually, React is also too slow to work with, so I'll add another layer and do it with Next.js. That's right, we've got frameworks inside of frameworks now. So that's OS -> GUI library -> browser -> framework -> framework framework -> application.
3. The world desperately needs to reduce its energy consumption to reduce the impact of climate change. If we can make more applications local and turn off a few servers, we should.
I am not an old man yelling at the cloud. I am a software engineer who cares deeply about efficient, reliable software, and I am begging, pleading for people to step back for a second and consider whether a simpler mode of application development is sufficient for their needs.
