Why Neutralinojs is better for lightweight apps? — proof

Neutralinojs framework was evaluated in comparison with Electron and NW.js considering disk consumption, memory consumption, easiness of development workflow and portability.

Please notice that the following comparison data may not match with the latest releases of Neutralinojs, NW.js, and Electron. This benchmark was done in 2018.

Sample applications

Simple Hello World type application is used in each framework on Linux and Windows for the evaluation.

Figure 1: Sample cross-platform apps written using Electron, NW.js and Neutralino respectively on Linux.

Figure 2: Sample cross-platform apps written using Electron, NW.js and Neutralino respectively on Windows.

OS details

• Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS
• Windows 10 Enterprise

1. Disk Consumption

Node Webkit

Linux

Zipped SDK size                   95.8 MB
Project Size                      1 KB
Application bundle                97.2 MB
Application bundle (zipped)       36.9 MB
File count of project             5         

Windows

Zipped SDK size                   72.7 MB
Project size                      2 KB
Application bundle                78.1 MB
Application bundle (zipped)       32.3 MB
File count of project             5

Electron

Linux

Build package                     51.53 MB
node_modules count                147 
File count of project             1539
Project size                      136.4 MB
Application bundle                128.6 MB
Application bundle (zipped)       51.5 MB

Windows

Build package                     53.16 MB
node_modules count                180 
File count of project             1368
Project size                      125 MB
Application bundle                118 MB
Application bundle (zipped)       50.4 MB

Neutralinojs

Linux

Portable SDK size                 5.8 MB
Portable SDK size (zipped)        1.1 MB
File count                        11

Windows

Portable SDK size                 5.53 MB
Portable SDK size (zipped)        1.01 MB
File count                        11

SDK and application bundle are similar things in Neutralino. We will be introducing an application builder CLI soon!. Alternatively project can be zipped as the application bundle. Special case is that a single application bundle will work on both platforms unlike other frameworks do.

See proof directory for sample sources and binary releases.

2. Memory consumption

NW.js

Linux                           ~ 40 - 42 MB
Windows                         ~ 40 - 45 MB

Electron

Linux                           ~ 62 - 65 MB
Windows                         ~ 45 - 50 MB

Neutralinojs

Linux                           ~ 8 - 9 MB
Windows                         ~ 6 - 7 MB  

3. Easiness of Development Workflow

Electron

NW.js

Neutralino

Note - neu-cli offers an automated development workflow

Neutralino Debugging

Neutralino app is served via a socket. Therefore debugging can be done using a web browser.

Figure 3: Debugging a Neutralino based app using Google Chrome.

4. Performance

Neutralino's performance basically depends on the performance of C++ server implementation. Here is the result for Neutralino.os.runCommand for ls command for 100 samples. It took average 6 miliseconds to respond ls bash command.

Label	# Samples	Average	Median	90% Line	95% Line	99% Line	Min	Max	Error %	Throughput	Received KB/sec	Sent KB/sec
HTTP Request	100	6	6	8	9	11	4	13	0.000%	87.87346	12.36	22.05
TOTAL	100	6	6	8	9	11	4	13	0.000%	87.87346	12.36	22.05

Result was captured by Apache JMeter using this test plan. See more details about this report here.

5. Conclusion

According to the results of this expertiment Neutralino can be used as a lightweight alternative for Electron and NW.js. Furthermore another experiment needs to be done by using somewhat large cross platform application such as draw.io. There are some drawbacks such as Windows edition is based on IE etc.

6. Contribution

Refer guidelines here