So I was posting on this thread which is a meme about how everything is Chromium (except Firefox obviously) and was replying to somebody talking about needing the “Linux of browser engines”.
This got me thinking about a few things as this is an area which I’m very much for reducing the, honestly slightly obscene, amount of control that Google have over this space with Chromium.
So I thought why not make a quick discussion to showcase some alternatives that are out there in development that people might not know about and bring them some attention as well as just foster a discussion in general on the topic.
So this won’t be focusing on Blink and WebKit (nor KHTML which, whilst independent is still closely tied to Blink and WebKit. For those unaware KHTML is KDE’s browser engine, forked by Apple to make WebKit which itself was forked to create Blink. It has also recently been killed off entirely for KF6 so is very much dead end now). By extension this also includes things like Qt WebEngine or anything else based on WebKit or Chromium/Blink.
I’m also not touching on Gecko - the other “big” engine out there. Whilst I am a huge proponent of Firefox, Gecko has proven that it just isn’t as popular to use in alternative browsers as Chromium or Webkit. I’m not knowledgeable to explain exactly why this is but there are plenty of resources out there. By extension I’m also not expanding upon Goanna.
The reason for my interest is also because it goes beyond just browsers - for example these could be used in Electron-like projects for desktop Javascript apps.
So what alternatives are there or are currently in development?
Servo
A project started by then abandoned by Mozilla to develop a new experimental browser engine. Was picked up by the Linux Foundation and had a recent round of funding to begin active development again. Why do I find this interesting?
- It isn’t being created as part of a larger browser project - i.e. it is a project to develop the engine and not to develop a browser. Hopefully this means it is far more portable and embedabble for anyone who wants to use it for their own project.
- Supported by the Linux Foundation rather than any of the tech corps like Facebook or Google which hopefully means they are more open and friendly to community contribution.
- Written in Rust - I’m not claiming that this is good because of the language technology itself but Rust is currently very popular with lots of people wanting to learn it and contribute to projects so hopefully this inspires people to get involved with it.
- Not a KHTML/WebKit/Blink (or even a Gecko) fork
- Repo is on GitHub - Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a GitHub shill, but generally people monitor and know how to use GitHub better than Google and Mozilla’s systems. I’d honestly be just as happy if using GitLab or any other alternatives as they still confirm to that same user experience (and to be fair WebKit is also on GitHub).
Ferus
A much smaller and lower profile project described as “A toy web engine written in Nim” but one I find interesting enough to be watching
- Written in Nim - I’m all for getting less popular but interesting languages being used in more projects
- Small GitHub hosted and actively developed project that seems would be easy to get involved with if you wanted to help develop or improve the project.
NetSurf and NeoSurf
Not browser engines but browsers that use their own engine and not based on anything else. NetSurf is the original and has been ported to a ton of different OSs (it was actually made for Acorn’s RISCOS originally) but development is somewhat slow so it seems NeoSurf is a fork to try and improve and build upon it.
LibWeb and Ladybird
Part of the fascinating SerenityOS project - Ladybird is its home grown but cross platform browser using its own LibWeb browser engine. Honestly I’m not particularly familiar with the project and the first link does a much better job of explaining it all than I can.
So yeah, just thought to put some open source alternative browser engine projects that are out there to draw attention and foster a little discussion in this community. Interested to see what people think.
Firefox user here. For years I’ve been using Chrome. Moved to Firefox. Can’t say I miss Chrome or Chromium based browsers.
Same. Firefox is so much better… I don’t understand why people don’t use it.
It’s because Chrome is so ubiquitous. You go to any Google site, particularly search, in a browser other than Chrome and you’re presented with notifications to install Chrome. Plus, its integration with Google accounts presents a great value proposition for many users.
Personally, I was on Firefox for years until I got a MacBook Pro in 2014. For whatever reason, Firefox would constantly crash, so I switched to Chrome. I only went back to Firefox in about… 2019(?) when they released Quantum and I’ve been on it since. It’s really the perfect browser, particularly with extension support. I also like how on Android you can install uBlock Origin.
With Google’s impending Manifest V3 looming on the horizon for all Chromium-based browsers, it just further cements my decision to remain on Firefox. I do keep Brave around as backup for the extremely rare situations where something for whatever reason doesn’t work in Firefox, but that’s becoming exceedingly unnecessary.
I ditched Firefox when they fucked up and forgot to renew an SSL cert and caused all my extensions to stop working. The internet without adblock is not worth using.
Now I use Waterfox
I’m not sure what you talking about… I never encountered such an issue using firefox daily for 5 years, using Ublock Origin for most of that time.
I recall something about this. Looked it up quickly and found this pretty sure it’s what they are referring to.
https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/fixed-certificate-issue-causing-add-ons-to-be-disabled-or-fail-to-install/39047
Either way, it seems (to me) like it’s such a petty thing to switch browsers permanently. I wouldn’t switch forever because of a simple bug that it looks like it was solved pretty quickly. Besides, don’t use Adblock Plus people. Use Ublock Origin. Much better.
Yeah that’s it. Obviously it was fixed after a couple days but the fact that it happened at all was the final straw for me. I was already pretty annoyed by pocket and the sponsored links.
I just can’t get used to Firefox render engine it just feels weird. And that’s a deal breaker for me. Happy Vivaldi user.
Same here. I think Firefox is great but it seems that, for whatever reason, it is unpopular as a base for alternative browsers (although one of my favourites is https://pulsebrowser.app/) and Gecko also seems unpopular as an engine, not even their own Positron project went anywhere although GeckoView seems to be maintained but I’m not familiar with it or projects using it.
I have heard that Gecko is harder to reimplement in a new browser. Probably Mozilla prefers people contributing to Firefox instead of making new browsers.
In fact, I have seen GNOME Web migrate from Gecko to Webkit, the Safari engine.
Over the years I always found something wrong with Firefox until I moved abruptly to it about 1 year ago. It’s not that bad and I don’t miss Chrome at all. Might be worth to try it these days
I’ve been using the Firefox line of browsers since its predecessor Netscape Navigator 3.0. They’ve made some boneheaded decisions over the years, and they keep adding useless bullshit that can’t be hidden from the UI without tinkering with the custom chrome sheet, but they’re still miles ahead of the competition. I’ve tried many, many times to use other browsers, but they always do something to piss me off and send me back to Firefox. Chief among Firefox’s virtues is the fact that it lets me drag my bookmark icons onto the same line as my address bar, which, let’s be honest, doesn’t really need to be a billion pixels wide all the time. It is the best feature ever, and I can’t live without it.
Finally downloaded Firefox on mobile to try it out.