Awesome

Awesome alternatives to Electron apps

A curated list of awesome apps which don't suck.

Electron is an application platform which spreads like a cancer in software development world making your immensely powerful computer feel slow and laggy. Sometimes apps made in Electron are useful, though. This list contains good alternatives to an memory hungry eco-unfriendly Electron software.

It is usually easy to find software on the other end of the spectrum: ultra-minimalist software on the brink of being unusable. Here we prefer to strike a balance between being featurefull and not beign resource demanding.

Applications

Development

• VS Code, Atom:

  • Sublime Text (C++, Paid) - light and fast text-editor IDE hybrid, which was an inspiration for VS Code
  • Gedit (Gtk) - suprisingly powerful standard Gnome text editor
  • Vim (C) - An available for everyone sadomasohist tool for coding

• Hyper terminal:

  • Kitty (Python+C) - Fast and featureful crossplatform terminal. Extendable by plugins.
  • Alacritty (Rust) - GPU-accelerated terminal emulator with focus on performance

• Git Kraken:

  • LazyGit (Go) - Neat terminal UI git client

• 1Clipboard

  • Prefer your OS clipboard manager
  • CopyQ (Qt) - Clipboard manager with searchable and editable history

• Postman:

  • httpie (Python) - Simple command-line HTTP client
  • If you still using VSCode: REST Client

Note taking apps

• Typora, Notable, Boostnote:
  • Zim (GTK) - closer to Desktop wiki, than note taking app. Primary markup isn't markdown
  • CuteMarkEd (Qt) - Just faster markdown editor without note tree

Communication

• Slack, Discord, Skype, Zoom:
  • Telegram (Qt+QML) - blazingly fast and light instant messenger
  • Jitsi (Java, Web) - Good free alternative for videocalls. Any of public instances, like meet.jit.si or self-hosted

Mail

• Mailspring:
  • Just don't use it

Players

• Google Play Music Desktop Player, Youtube Music Desktop Player:
  • Just install them as a SPA using Chromium or Brave

Launchers

• Cerebro
  • Albert - app launcher similar to spotlight with python Plugins