Looking at the amount of RAM phones have nowadays I don't know if this is an issue, desktop Linux runs fine with those amounts. Also Android is not really memory efficient so they needed this workaround.
Other times I'm sure I've hit 60-70.
Because of iOS's app management feature, most of the apps are actually dead, but if I go back and open any of them, they will open and load on the screen on which I left them.
Android does this too.
Desktop Linux cannot.
Can I open 60-70 or even 35 Electron apps simultaneously on 8GB of RAM on Linux?
And no, I do not want to to back to closing apps, that is simply an inferior experience.
What is difficult is e.g. supporting the undocumented photo/video camera and other essential parts of the hardware that lack documentation.
You need a stack that is designed from first principles for phones. Luckily we have one that is open source (AOSP).
It's not a technical problem, it's a social one (for the apps/programs)
You can't be serious. Browsers can't even remember the most trivial of things - a tiny html page, retaining reading position, forcing a reload. Of course many apps are no better (though some do try, just like on the desktop) And it's especially worse with user input that just gets lost
> And no, I do not w to to back to closing apps, that is simply an inferior experience.
Ctrl+Q to close and a shortcut to open or is a faster and more convenient than swiping around. As is typing an app's name on a real keyboard. Tapping "desktop" icon is arguably better, though, that a mouse click
I don't want to close apps, I don't want to manage my computer's resources.
It should just work and it should just work well.
That's just magical thinking (thought I totally agree with the sentiment, it should, and Linux should also be better), it doesn't, you're still doing the management, just using a different set of gestures.
For example, knowing about this poor "incredible engineering" I sometimes have to reopen the app in the middle of using another app not to lose my input/position there, especially when I need some basic cooperative behavior like copy paste in multiple steps, where I need to make sure no steps are lost. The primitive iOS system can't guarantee that! And in some instances I'd take the overall sluggishness due to RAM waste over this because then I'd still manage to complete the task, albeit slower, instead of having to redo the work (and in some old apps I could even save intermediate progress to those ancient things called files that Apple despises)
> which is just one tap away from where I was
Except it isn't. If you've scrolled to X% of the document, there is no 1 tap to get back there! And if it took you 5 taps to open that sub-page sub-group it the app setting, then getting from the hope page will take the same 5 taps + some time wasted remembering where you want to go to. And if you lose your input in the input field, same thing, 1 tap won't magically recover it.
And if you're temporarily in a place without (good) network conneciton, you might never get there in any number of taps becaus the page won't load.
Btw, if it's fine to lose user data, than Linux can OOM your apps for you just fine without any extra management on your side. Sure, its current state of app management is not as good as on mobile, it does lack some "engineering" in this regard, though not sure what's so magical about more careful killing of apps
That's the point. Android and iOS have cooperative applications by design. They implement an interface and apps will save their state on command and restore it on next run quickly.
You can't get it back properly without the apps being cooperative to a degree
Except they don't, including apps created by the OS owners! Only some apps do, just like some desktop apps autosave.
> You can't get it back properly without the apps being cooperative to a degree
Exactly! Just like on any desktop OS!
For example Adobe Acrobat does remember exact position in the document, so do first party Apple apps and many others.
Some apps don't.
On Linux no app CAN implement this because the protocols do not exist.
Again, what I've started with - this is simply false. App Store, the first party gateway to all apps, doesn't. It loses the app page you're in all the time and can't even remember your search query. Safari doesn't
> On Linux no app CAN implement this because the protocols do not exist.
What do you mean, what stops an app from saving position and restoring it in the absence of some magical protocol? How have some apps done in since before the phones existed?
More generally apps can store whatever info they want when they're going away to be retrieved when coming back transparently.
On the other hand semantics on the Linux desktop are such that the operating system cannot inform an app that it is going away transparently.
An app that is SIGKILL'd cannot save anything (unless it is proactively saving all the time which is terrible for battery life), an app which is SIGSTOP'd must save it's entire memory space and cannot relinquish locks or GPU resources, and an app that is SIGTERM'd can ask the user to save their work etc. (which is not what a transparently closed app should do).
Have you tried other tabs in Safari? Turned off the internet to see whether it's redownloading a page. (by the way, Safari uses 1G of cache, that's enough to store all my 40 tabs basic htmls, yet it doesn't, it finds other less relevant data more important)
And just for this I've tested two more native apps: opened settings/filters in Magnifier, and started editing a password in Passwords app. I was glad that both of these seem to remember the state, and their app switcher screenshot reflected it (well, except for passwords, which is hidden), but then after a longer time reopened them, and position was gone and I was back on the main page - exactly the experience I came to rely upon with trivial bits of state simply gone.
> is SIGTERM'd can ask the user to save their work etc. (which is not what a transparently closed app should do).
Why can't it save the state without asking??? Have you used text editors with hot reload? They just quit with "unsaved" (but not "lost") files.
Spoiler: I have :-)