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onion ,

Harddrives start at 16€/TB, so 500MB would be 0.008€. SSDs start at 50€/TB, so it would be 0.025€ or two-and-a-half cents

filcuk ,

I don't think people are worried about storing hundreds of Signal instances, this isn't a photo backup.
The concerns are bloat, optimisation, and memory usage.

Also, HDDs can go from $7.5/TB

captainjaneway ,
@captainjaneway@lemmy.world avatar

That's the point. The storage is a bad metric. While it might indicate poor performance, it's not a direct indication of poor performance. The bloat and optimization comes from the usage of Electron. And people use Electron because it's far easier to make cross-platform deployments for Web and desktop using a framework like Electron. Show me the QT/JavaFX app that mimics Signal and we can compare the cost to develop it. Electron isn't the best choice for memory usage and reducing bloat, but it's the best choice for quick development (in my opinion but also proven out by the market share it has)

Sethayy ,

Me putting a 4 TB 3.5" HDD in my phone

onion ,

Why are you installing Signal Desktop on your phone?

Sethayy ,

You got me there

KillingTimeItself ,

yes but think about how much money writing 500MB worth of code would cost.

I realize it's not all code, and some of it is already written, but please, muse me, and do the math for it.

onion ,

Writing less code costs more money. The programm is large because they slapped some existing stuff together instead of writing everything from scratch

KillingTimeItself ,

there is an inevitable cost to written code though, it simply cannot be computed away. In this case the cost is just a shitty application with an even shittier user experience.

answersplease77 ,

even the phone app is larger than telegram and whatsapp

LainTrain ,

This is why I moved to Telegram. Idk if it's actually native, but often feels much more so, and less phone-centric than Signal which requires weird auth rituals involving the phone.

snake_case_lover ,
@snake_case_lover@lemmy.world avatar

its a QT+Webview project. So C++ and JS together. Cpp doing heavy tasks while JS doing cute animatons.

toastboy79 ,

friendly reminder

https://www.tomsguide.com/news/signal-vs-telegram

I'd you care about security, stop using telegram.

0x30507DE ,
@0x30507DE@lemmy.today avatar

Personally, I'm a big fan of XMPP, due to the inherent resiliency in being decentralized/federated, and due to the security provided by OMEMO (based on signal's algorithm). Don't have to worry about third-parties messing with my data if it stays on my server that's in my house.

rdri ,

Signal is not an alternative to telegram and vice versa. Telegram has too many public communication features that people often use. The nature of signal will prevent it from having similar features.

Carighan ,
@Carighan@lemmy.world avatar

People want a chat app. If your secure chat app sucks as a chat app, it doesn't matter how secure it is. It failed the primary use case it was meant to be developed for.

But keep in mind, Signal's nature is no excuse to have shitty app implementations. In particular to have desktop apps as second-class citizens (and tablets as exterminated not-citizens). You can be a secure chat app. Signal got the secure part done, they're just struggling with the chat app part.

seliaste ,
@seliaste@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

The telegram desktop app is wonderful

lung ,
@lung@lemmy.world avatar

Is it possible to run the android app on Linux somehow? Hmm...

Krafting ,
@Krafting@lemmy.world avatar

Waydroid! No idea if Signal works with it though, worth to try it

MeanEYE ,
@MeanEYE@lemmy.world avatar

Well dooh, you installed Chrome with it. Add to that their application and there you have it.

irotsoma ,
@irotsoma@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah, I've been having a lot of issues with Electron which is basically a browser emulator. It has gotten huge, so applications using it have gotten out of control in size. I get that it's a quick way to build a cross platform application, but there really needs to either be a better way to distribute it that is more modular, or people need to start building on better cross platform front-end systems.

KillingTimeItself ,

and it also runs like shit too.

alyth OP ,

i am doing a full system upgrade and something wants to build chromium from source. i let it run in the background and cloning the repository alone has downloaded 33GB wtf 😭

irotsoma ,
@irotsoma@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah, I had to move away from Arch Linux because lots of apps you have to build and Electron was one of the biggest culprits for using tons of disk space and time because it builds Chromium in its entirety from source. Electron is a great way to shift the cost of cross platform development from you to your customers.

Vilian ,

the solution could be deduplication, not sure if microsoft store has it, or windows supports it, this help with the size, bot not ram usage

AProfessional ,

Windows doesn’t support deduplication itself (though ntfs does support hardlinks if someone wanted to do it). It actually won’t help here because every electron app bundles different versions in practice.

Username ,

Back in the day Signal was a Qt app, did that change?

AProfessional ,

Maybe you are thinking of Telegram?

I'm not sure of its past, this repo goes back 4 years, but Signal is electron https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/tree/main

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