There's also "marktext" as a FOSS replacement for "typora".
Not quite as polished as typora and still a few quircks (like whitespace in filenames) in it's export functions (a video link as src blocks the export) but very promising prospects.
Another that is quite interesting is "zettlr"
it's FOSS and very versatile but isn't as good as typora, in the sense that live WYSIWYG isn't a full 100% (look at the headers in the screenshot) and export ... to html/pdf has the same issues as "mark-text", it breaks on "empty" (read: not recognized) code blocks
I don't think there's another way to render markdown as html other than using a browser internally. Even webkit uses up at least 100Mb, so WYSIWYG has it's toll.
I agree.
Anyone wanting more can install whatever is needed but "ghostwriter" combined with "pandoc" are the lightest and noob friendly option.
I also tried out "atom", "ascidocfx" and some more I can't remember but none were as easy as ghostwriter ..... excepting maybe typora.
