The problem is performance... requiring a web browser to draw a UI takes a LOT of CPU and memory, and not all devices have enough power to deliver a smooth experience across all potential workloads.

I worry that every year we keep increasing our processing requirements and bloat without good reason for it.

Why should every Windows release require a faster and faster CPU, and more and more RAM?

The recommended amount of memory for Windows 95 was 8 megabytes, and for Windows 11 it is 8 gigabytes. Why is this not horrifying?

My small Linux system with openbox GUI barely cracks 100MB memory usage in 2025.

▲

Rohansi 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> requiring a web browser to draw a UI takes a LOT of CPU and memory

What makes a browser so much more inefficient vs. other UI frameworks? Is it really the browser's fault or the website's you're visiting?

▲

4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

[deleted]

▲

troupo 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

What makes the browser slow and inefficient is the fact that it's not a UI framework. It's a system to display text and a couple of images on a 2D plane where every element depends on every other element.

Almost every single interaction and change requires the browser to recalculate the layout of the entire page and to redraw it. It's basically Microsoft Word, with nearly the same behaviors.

And there are no proper ways to prevent that behaviour. No lower and low level control over rendering. Awkward workarounds and hacks that browsers employ to try and minimize re-layouting and redrawing. Great rejoicing when introducing yet more hacks for basic things: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/css-ui/animate-to-height-a... etc.

▲

Rohansi 24 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

> It's a system to display text and a couple of images on a 2D plane

And how is that different from a UI framework?

> Almost every single interaction and change requires the browser to recalculate the layout of the entire page and to redraw it.

What UI frameworks don't do this?

▲

wiseowise an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

That’s just plain wrong, even ChatGPT will rebuke your comment. I’m sure someone working on Blink/WebKit will just laugh at your comment.

	▲	troupo an hour ago \| parent [-]
		"even ChatGPT" lol Here's a deeper dive. It's about animations, but it explains issues in a nice way that "even ChatGPT" can understand: https://motion.dev/blog/web-animation-performance-tier-list

▲

shooly 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Why should every Windows release require a faster and faster CPU, and more and more RAM?

I don't know. But does it? It doesn't seem like you verified that yourself - you're comparing stated recommended specs of Windows to actual usage of Linux.

▲

edoceo 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

There are slim webviews, that can do core HTML and CSS, make a nice UI and not chew all the RAM.