It still has some of the same problems as the comic, though not to the same extent, it doesn’t need to be a standard for the comic to make sense, it’s also about market share. Having yet another browser has the potential of diluting the market and making people just go for the default.
I might agree if it was another Chromium browser or something, but this uses its own rendering engine and thus directly opposes Google’s dominance on web standards. Currently, there are only 3 major rendering engines:
Those are the two biggest desktops on Linux. In fact, when I run Tauri (like Electron, but uses your system webview instead of bundling it), it uses GNOME Web on my system.
They absolutely do. A lot of distros package Firefox or Chromium or something as the default, but those browsers are default for their respective DEs.
Here are their most recent releases:
Konquerer - 24.12.2 2025-02-06
GNOME Web - 47.3.1 (Jan 2025)
They don’t move very fast, but they don’t need to since they just pull in upstream changes. Their main purpose is to provide a default webview and browser, but most people use a different browser for everyday use.
It had a release this month, that doesn’t sound dead…
But yeah, it’s unfortunate that Qt WebEngine is Chromium based. I get it though, it’s probably less work to maintain and if users complain, you tell them it’s the most popular embedded engine.
kwebkitpart
Maybe you’re right though, the last commit on master seems to be 2 months ago. I wonder if it’s officially dead or just maintenance only.
Congratulations on completely misunderstanding the comic.
Ladybird is not a new standard. It is a new implementation of existing standards. Nobody has to change or adapt anything.
It still has some of the same problems as the comic, though not to the same extent, it doesn’t need to be a standard for the comic to make sense, it’s also about market share. Having yet another browser has the potential of diluting the market and making people just go for the default.
I might agree if it was another Chromium browser or something, but this uses its own rendering engine and thus directly opposes Google’s dominance on web standards. Currently, there are only 3 major rendering engines:
Ladybird and Servo (Mozilla R&D project) are new ones, and Ladybird seems to have more traction.
Engine diversity is important. Browser diversity… a bit less so.
Currently there are 3 browsers available and one of them is only available on overpriced disposable hardware.
If the latter is Safari, then WebKit-based browsers are available for Windows and Unix-likes too.
Actually WebKit is often used in the same role Gecko would be used, until Mozilla decided they don’t want alternative browsers on Gecko.
Which are? Please list a few current ones that have reasonable backing and at least a mid-size community.
I wasn’t thinking of such and meant
vimborsurf.Here are two on Linux:
Those are the two biggest desktops on Linux. In fact, when I run Tauri (like Electron, but uses your system webview instead of bundling it), it uses GNOME Web on my system.
They still exist? I was under the impression that they are abandoned.
They absolutely do. A lot of distros package Firefox or Chromium or something as the default, but those browsers are default for their respective DEs.
Here are their most recent releases:
They don’t move very fast, but they don’t need to since they just pull in upstream changes. Their main purpose is to provide a default webview and browser, but most people use a different browser for everyday use.
Konqueror is more or less dead as a browser. I don’t even think kwebkitpart is maintained anymore since QtWebkit was abandoned with Qt6.
It had a release this month, that doesn’t sound dead…
But yeah, it’s unfortunate that Qt WebEngine is Chromium based. I get it though, it’s probably less work to maintain and if users complain, you tell them it’s the most popular embedded engine.
Maybe you’re right though, the last commit on master seems to be 2 months ago. I wonder if it’s officially dead or just maintenance only.
That is not the point of making another browser.