Servo VS tauri

> I mentioned momentum for a reason, servo doesn't have any. Ladybird however is extremely actively developed.

Looking at https://github.com/servo/servo it's very actively developed and gaining new contributors. The number of contributors for both projects is very similar. They are both active.

I felt like this link is missing some important context.

History: Initially started by Mozilla in 2012. They laid off the team off in 2020 and transferred the project to the Linux Foundation. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servo_(software)

2025 Roadmap: https://github.com/servo/servo/wiki/Roadmap

At this point, I believe, it's important to accelerate development of Servo[1], which not only provides better browser security because of memory safety (getting rid of the stupid mistakes like OOB access or UAF), but is also managed[2] by Linux Foundation Europe[3], which gives more hope from the privacy standpoint.

[1] https://github.com/servo/servo

[2] https://servo.org/about/

[3] https://linuxfoundation.eu/

I understand that people need alternatives that work now but please consider contributing your developer expertise and/or donating to Ladybird[0] / Servo[1]. We need to get away from our current engine monoculture of Chromium/Gecko (yes I know webkit exists)

[0]: https://ladybird.org

[1]: https://servo.org

Ladybird is lucky in that it has someone who knows how important marketing is, even for opensource projects. There are other opensource browser engine projects languishing because of lack of PR, patronage and / or volunteers. For e.g. NetSurf https://www.netsurf-browser.org/ - website is outdated because of lack of volunteers, but the project has active development - https://source.netsurf-browser.org/netsurf.git/ (already has partial support for CSS3, and Flex layout). Servo (https://servo.org/) is another but it gets some decent PR because of its Rust codebase and the Rust PR team.

It seems that they moved it since to a bigger meta issue and it's actively being worked on https://github.com/servo/servo/issues/30593.

https://github.com/servo/servo

Servo is upcoming, but so far it is fantastic in comparison to any other browser out there.

I tend to focus on any software that does not require 12 teams of people 6 weeks to determine how to build a single binary because of the use of 20 different programming languages and mixing and matching of paradigms and solutions to subconponents.

Tauri is a Rust-based library that enables you to build lightweight desktop applications by leveraging web technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for the UI. You can use any frontend framework of your choice that compiles to HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Unlike Electron (a JavaScript desktop app development framework), which relies on Chromium and Node.js, Tauri uses the system's native web view.

Then I learned Tauri and used my favourite frontend framework SolidJS with TailwindCSS and DaisyUI to build the UI with MotionOne to add animations and Tauri to build the desktop/web/android/ios app.

tauri dev is incredibly slow

Are the memory benchmarks measured correctly?

This tauri issue suggests the common measurement approach might be wrong

https://github.com/tauri-apps/tauri/issues/5889

Also would be better to have specific startup time instead of "fast" (which is strange since electron is not known for fast startup)

Here is a whole story: https://github.com/tauri-apps/tauri/discussions/4089

tl;dr - Tauri uses platform's default implementation of a webview. On Windows it's WebView2 which reports back to MS.

I mean, most OSes already ship with a WebView component that you can use instead of shipping an entire browser runtime.

Wails does that: https://wails.io/

Tauri also does that: https://tauri.app/

That does help with the needed resources quite a bit: https://github.com/Elanis/web-to-desktop-framework-compariso...

Sadly it doesn’t change the memory usage much so the technology is still inherently wasteful, but on a certain level it feels like a lost battle - because web technologies often feel like the choice of least resistance when you want GUI software that will run on a bunch of platforms while not being annoying to develop (from the perspective of your run of the mill dev).

HTML/CSS can still be used for the frontend even without Electron. Some frameworks use the OS bundled web renderer instead:

- For Rust apps: https://github.com/tauri-apps/tauri

- For Go apps: https://github.com/wailsapp/wails

Official Website: https://tauri.app/ (v2.0)

In the article, the claim is made: if many popular software products like Slack, VSCode, and Docker Desktop all use Electron, then it must be good.

In response, I would say: while Electron makes it easy for the software developer to build and distribute software, especially on multiple platform, as an end user it is NEVER the best experience.

That's why there are people spending significant effort to develop better solutions than Electron. For instance, the Tauri project ( https://tauri.app/ ) is a lightweight alternative to Electron.

The article defends the minimum application bundle size of 100MB-300MB is as no issue, because streaming 4K video takes much more bandwidth than such a software download. But the bigger issue than disk space or download bandwidth is the RAM usage and overall low performance of Electron projects. Even with a 16 GB or 32 GB RAM system, when you're running many apps and doing serious multitasking, the gigabytes quickly get used up and then things slow down.

For example, if you have used VSCode, try using the Zed editor (https://zed.dev/). You will be blown away by its incredible speed. Launches in the blink of an eye, and it responds to every input with zero latency. We have forgotten that software can actually be fast.

Jonathan Blow, "Will Software Stop Getting Slower?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ka549NNdDk