Why are certain apps so slow?

[gamerminstrel]

I'm hoping for possibly more technical explanations from people involved or those that just know.

The apps I'm looking forward to in the future are Cawbird (Twitter client) Giara (a Reddit client) and Komikku (a comic reading client). Looking at these apps, they seem to use the same UI framework which looks great, but actually using these apps is less than pleasant. Scrolling is jittery, and that assumes the app is responsive enough to let you scroll.

Is it just a less-than-stellar web toolkit that both these apps are using? I just recently discovered GTKeddit, which runs like a champ in comparison. It Has GTK in the name so I think it uses the same UI framework at least. Does anyone have any ideas?

[KNERD]

Could be the distro you are using.

[gamerminstrel]

Could be the distro you are using.

I wish it were so simple as changing distros. Issues persist in Mobian+Phosh, as well as Manjaro+PlasmaMobile. My current theory (I have no proof, just a hunch) is that the apps that have significantly slower performance are using the GNOME Webkit to pull data from websites, and something about that toolkit is lacking.

[KNERD]

Well, depsite what the desktop is, Manjaro is still the base OS.

[gamerminstrel]

Mobian is debian though.

[KNERD]

Mobian is debian though.

You did specifically state "Issues persist in Mobian+Phosh, as well as Manjaro+PlasmaMobile"

[gamerminstrel]

Mobian is debian though.

You did specifically state "Issues persist in Mobian+Phosh, as well as Manjaro+PlasmaMobile"

You implied that Manjaro is the root cause of the slowness. Mobian is "Mobile Debian" which is not based on Manjaro in any way. I wanted to clarify the issue persists across multiple completely different versions of linux.

---

Is it just a less-than-stellar web toolkit that both these apps are using?

In my experience, an app being web-based is basically a near guarantee it will be unusable on the PinePhone. These seem to be just too CPU inefficient for the slow A64, I imagine due to the Web DOM overhead mostly, since JS in itself is fast and even Python apps (Python is slow!) I have tried ran okay where their UI was just GTK+/Qt and not web.

E.g. from me trying messengers, to be more concrete: Telegram (Qt) and Fluffychat (Flutter) work fine with some minor hangs here and there, but Discord's web client as well as Element Desktop (web-based) are near unusable with absolutely monstrous typing lag.

Web apps are just a huge waste of energy, it appears. Better to stay clear of them, and spread the word to developers to maybe use a less badly inefficient technology if possible.

I mostly agree with you but I think there is some nuance. For example, using Angelfish Browser to save twitter and reddit as webapps/shortcuts converts them into some pretty responsive webapps I can scroll through just fine (full usability isn't there yet, Angelfish webapps are still a work in progress). It really depends on the app/site in question, and I believe things packaged in an electron wrapper might also have a ridiculous amount of overhead. 

It says something when opening the full-bloated website reddit in the browser is vastly faster than using a dedicated app like Giara. I think some component it's using is just not up to snuff yet (thus my guess being the Gnome webkit they're using instead of Google's webkit).

[ryo]

Apps these days are made for high-end devices only, just to make absolutely sure you get rid of your otherwise perfectly fine werking old devices and constantly buy new ones over time, which in general are designed to break faster than old devices and on top of that cost more and more money to purchase.
Planned obsolesence like how it's called.

In my experience, an app being web-based is basically a near guarantee it will be unusable on the PinePhone. These seem to be just too CPU inefficient for the slow A64, I imagine due to the Web DOM overhead mostly, since JS in itself is fast and even Python apps (Python is slow!) I have tried ran okay where their UI was just GTK+/Qt and not web.

E.g. from me trying messengers, to be more concrete: Telegram (Qt) and Fluffychat (Flutter) work fine with some minor hangs here and there, but Discord's web client as well as Element Desktop (web-based) are near unusable with absolutely monstrous typing lag.

Web apps are just a huge waste of energy, it appears. Better to stay clear of them, and spread the word to developers to maybe use a less badly inefficient technology if possible.

That's why I was never a fan of outsourcing all apps to the browser, only to then pull them back to the desktop via Electron.
Javascript used to be a fun experiment when it was made to only spice up web pages a little bit, but now that it's used for entire frontends AND backends AND desktop/mobile apps, you're basically forced to get a top of the line device from the distant future to have a no lag experience.

With Element you can still get around by using Weechat which is the only Matrix client (actually an IRC client which happens to have a Matrix plugin) that both supports OLM end to end encryption and is not a resource hog.
Discord on the other hand outright bans you for using any 3rd party client.
Though, why would you even use Discord anyway?

[gamerminstrel]

Apps these days are made for high-end devices only, just to make absolutely sure you get rid of your otherwise perfectly fine werking old devices and constantly buy new ones over time, which in general are designed to break faster than old devices and on top of that cost more and more money to purchase.
Planned obsolesence like how it's called.

In my experience, an app being web-based is basically a near guarantee it will be unusable on the PinePhone. These seem to be just too CPU inefficient for the slow A64, I imagine due to the Web DOM overhead mostly, since JS in itself is fast and even Python apps (Python is slow!) I have tried ran okay where their UI was just GTK+/Qt and not web.

E.g. from me trying messengers, to be more concrete: Telegram (Qt) and Fluffychat (Flutter) work fine with some minor hangs here and there, but Discord's web client as well as Element Desktop (web-based) are near unusable with absolutely monstrous typing lag.

Web apps are just a huge waste of energy, it appears. Better to stay clear of them, and spread the word to developers to maybe use a less badly inefficient technology if possible.

That's why I was never a fan of outsourcing all apps to the browser, only to then pull them back to the desktop via Electron.
Javascript used to be a fun experiment when it was made to only spice up web pages a little bit, but now that it's used for entire frontends AND backends AND desktop/mobile apps, you're basically forced to get a top of the line device from the distant future to have a no lag experience.

With Element you can still get around by using Weechat which is the only Matrix client (actually an IRC client which happens to have a Matrix plugin) that both supports OLM end to end encryption and is not a resource hog.
Discord on the other hand outright bans you for using any 3rd party client.
Though, why would you even use Discord anyway?

I understand and agree with what you're saying. Because of my job, I have to use Slack and Microsoft Teams, and most of my friend group is gamers who *refuse* to consider trying anything other than Discord.

I dislike all 3 of those, but I have no choice.

[ryo]

I understand and agree with what you're saying. Because of my job, I have to use Slack and Microsoft Teams, and most of my friend group is gamers who *refuse* to consider trying anything other than Discord.

I dislike all 3 of those, but I have no choice.

Damage can be limited by running those 3 in the browser.
Though not sure why you'd use any of these on a phone anyway.
Preferably we'd just return to the old days when a phone was just a voice calling and email device.
And let PCs handle all the more advanced stuff.

They need smartphones (specifically Android and iOS) for the new world order, because smartphones are the new world order.
Linux phones are a nice middleground between a basic voice and email only device and a fully features smartphone, but it's basically like giving smokers nicotine patches instead of making them stop smoking altogether.