• Laxaria
          4·
          2 years ago

          Being “open source” seems to be lead people to think it is altruistic or good for the community as a whole.

          Being open source is really just a categorization. A fully for profit organization can make something valuable open source and then leverage that for commercial reasons (like building highly monetized additional code on top).

          It is in Google’s best interests for Chromium to dominate the web even if it is open source due to Chrome’s broad reach and Google’s heavy leverage of the web for revenue, like its ad services.

          It is shortsighted to see what is happening and then go “well I don’t see a problem”.

            • Laxaria
              2·
              2 years ago

              The extensive reach of Chromium is usually a bit understated too. For example, Chromium is what powers all Electron applications., and as much as we want to gripe about the nightmare Electron has enabled, it still has wide reach. Building for Electron means building for Chromium, and building for Chromium often entails leveraging what is available in Chrome/Electron/etc over what is standard. These frequently overlap, but when they don’t, the blame is then placed on the browser rather than on the website (i.e. why doesn’t XYZ work on Firefox, when the reason is the website developer chose not to test/ensure it does work).

              This gets very funny in some situations where visiting a website in Firefox throws a “not supported” page but switching the user-string to Chrome/Chromium results in the same website working just fine.

      • donnachaidh
        1·
        2 years ago

        The are a couple desktop webkit browsers you can test on to get it working on iPhone. I had a few long-running bugs on a website that I didn’t know how to fix until I found out Epiphany/Gnome Web uses it.

    • thehatfox@kbin.social
      13·
      2 years ago

      Yes, it’s a sad state of affairs that Apple’s restrictions on iOS and iPadOS browsers are the only thing stopping an effective Google monopoly over web browsers. Ideally Firefox would still keep things in balance, but Mozilla doesn’t seem to know what it’s doing these days in terms of building market share - and I say that as a long time Firefox user.

      I still remember the IE 6 era, and I hope we never see a single browser dominate the web again. To those wishing Apple would be forced to open up, be careful what you wish for.

      • sunbeam60@lemmy.oneEnglish
        41·
        2 years ago

        Firefox is in a pickle, because unlike the IE/Firefox, where FF was winning share by the boatload against a stagnant competitor, Chrome is super actively developed, active and heavily pushed by Google. Basically FF is now kept alive by Google the way you’d keep a single competitor city alive in Civilization to ensure you game wouldn’t end with a military/domination victory. FF is a Native American reservation surrounded by white folks not giving a shit about what happens on your dust bowl.

        But yes, FF for life for me!

        • NakedGardenGnome
          1·
          2 years ago

          Too bad their iOS browsers never follow the guidelines as the other two do, even as chrome is kinda balling it right now…

    • Zagorath@aussie.zone
      1·
      2 years ago

      I’ve already heard so many places tell people not to use Firefox or Safari to access their website

      A website I used to frequent did that. They had good reason. Firefox simply didn’t support the CSS property that that site used to achieve its purpose. It’s a long time ago though, so I don’t remember which property that was, or know whether Firefox has since implemented it.

  • editediting@kbin.social
    501·
    2 years ago

    Chromium, privacy chromium, corporate chromium, spyware chromium, there’s so much diversity! /s

  • onepinksheep@kbin.social
    491·
    2 years ago

    The misuse of this meme is one of my biggest meme pet peeves. Have people forgotten that in that scene, his vision is clear when he’s not wearing glasses? So the meme should be the other way around.

  • electroskunk
    36·
    2 years ago

    Real men telnet to the web server and manually type GET commands and read the raw HTML.

  • Melody Fwygon@lemmy.one
    24·
    2 years ago

    I hate chromium.

    It acts like chrome because IT IS CHROME!!! Minus the obvious branding and proprietary “Google-y bits” Unfortunately it’s the same codebase.

    At least Firefox at it’s core truly differs.

    • HiddenLayer5@lemmy.ml
      1·
      2 years ago

      The only reason Chromium exists is because Google is bound by the original license when they bought it, which is copyleft. So they have to release an open source version, which is Chromium. Google Chrome is their flagship product and is proprietary and hence is the one that bears the Google branding and colours.

        • danielton@kbin.social
          11·
          2 years ago

          Sure, it’s open-source, but Google essentially controls it. That is literally why they forked WebKit. And websites are starting to rely on Chromium’s quirks. Firefox and Safari will have to choose between following standards or Google’s quirks. Not ideal at all.

          • OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml
            1·
            2 years ago

            Back when I used Chrome, I kept getting bug reports about things not working on FF.

            Now that I use FF, it always just works on Chrome.

            Feels good to know my website is always working :)

  • metaltoilet@beehaw.org
    213·
    2 years ago

    Ah… the first repost I’ve seen on the threadiverse thus far. I hope this doesn’t become a trend.

        • Daeraxa@lemmy.ml
          1·
          2 years ago

          So there are a few reasons I’m personally interested in it:

          • It isn’t being created as the “heart” of a browser - i.e. it is a project to develop the engine and not to develop a browser
          • Supported by the Linux Foundation rather than any of the tech corps like Facebook or Google
          • 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).

          And none of those touch on the technology itself which, honestly, I’m not experienced enough to speak on why it is as good as/better/worse than KHTML/WebKit/Blink or Gecko. Words and phrases like “memory safety”, “parallelizing” and “performance” are thrown around but I’ll leave that to the judgement of those who know better. You might like to have a look at some of the links in https://github.com/servo/servo/wiki/Browser-Engine-Research if you are interested in that front.

      • Hypx@kbin.social
        8·
        2 years ago

        From what I understand, Gecko was a terrible engine from the get-go. It is also difficult to work with, and had a lot of idiosyncrasies that made hard to build anything that isn’t just a clone of Firefox. There’s a reason why Apple used KHTML as the basis of Safari and not Gecko. Even Brave is based off of Chromium, and the founder of Brave is one of Mozilla’s founders!

        So apparently no, Gecko is not it. We need something closer to a pure browser engine that is open source.

        • Aurix
          1·
          2 years ago

          The current Firefox engine is so much better than before the rewrite. It was literally multiple magnitudes slower than Chrome.

          • skippedtoc
            1·
            2 years ago

            The above commenter is not talking about speed. At least it’s not the main point.

          • R0cket_M00se
            11·
            2 years ago

            Are we defining software based on being open source or the ethics of Google? I never said they were a good company, but if we are operating on the ability for someone to take the code and make it their own then yes, it’s effectively the “Linux of browsers.”

      • BrooklynMan@lemmy.ml
        8·
        2 years ago

        When that source, open or otherwise, is unilaterally controlled by Google, that doesn’t really mean much

        • R0cket_M00se
          24·
          2 years ago

          No, it’s not. It’s open source and can be modified from Google’s baseline to be free of their restrictions by anyone who cares to put in the work, like Brave and Vivaldi.

            • R0cket_M00se
              15·
              2 years ago

              In every way Linux has the potential to in a world where 99% of people would rather just use Windows, sure.

              Most people are just going to use Chrome and don’t give a shit. If you’re developing/using a different browser then yeah you probably have the ability to significantly impact the way web browsing happens going forward. As any fork of chromium is it’s own thing and has the ability to become the new standard.

      • Hypx@kbin.social
        6·
        2 years ago

        People are worried that Google controls the project. Anyone using Chromium is basically making their own version of Chrome but with extra features.

        • R0cket_M00se
          13·
          2 years ago

          Which means they don’t fucking understand how browsers work.

          Anyone can make a new fork of chromium, Vivaldi has created their own ad and tracker blocking that doesn’t rely on Google or the manifest v3 change that broke ad blocking on chromium for everyone else.

          You don’t have to rely on Google for shit if you’re committed to making the fork your own.

          • mr47
            1·
            2 years ago

            And what happens when your fork diverges too much? That will be maintenance nightmare, good luck with that.

            • R0cket_M00se
              12·
              2 years ago

              How is it any different from developing a new Linux distro?

              • mr47
                1·
                2 years ago

                If that’s your metaphore, then the browser engine is the kernel. Have you ever seen a Linux distro forking the kernel and taking it into a different direction? It’s always just (relatively) minor changes, if any, so that keeping up with the upstream kernel is possible. Mostly a matter of built-in drivers, and a security feature here and there.

      • R0cket_M00se
        34·
        2 years ago

        It’s exactly what chromium is.

        Claiming there’s a chromium monopoly is like claiming cars have an internal combustion engine monopoly.

  • codenul@lemmy.ml
    12·
    2 years ago

    Recently switched over to mull browser. Fork of the Firefox browser, works great so far. Also if you are unsure of the security of your browser, could use the website, browseraudit.com, that rates your current browsers. Runs 100+ against several tests and reports back.

    • R0cket_M00se
      2·
      2 years ago

      What’s the fork have under it’s belt that makes you like it? I just tried Firefox again and it lacks a few nice features I’m used to, but overall seems pretty quick. It didn’t want to stay logged in but that could have been operator error on my part.

  • GenBlob
    121·
    2 years ago

    Nothing is worse than seeing chromium-based browser users fight other chromium-based browser users. You are all using the same fucking thing!

    • R0cket_M00se
      77·
      2 years ago

      “It’s funny to see people who use cars with V-8’s argue about other models and makes of cars with V-8’s, you’re all using the same fucking thing!”

      See how absolutely stupid as fuck that sounds? Cause all cars are different even though they use virtual identical model of engines? That’s what you sound like.

      • Tom_Dude
        31·
        2 years ago

        I believe it would be a valid concern, if those V-8 engines were all designed and manufactured by the same company. Sure, one could modify it’s design to suit their needs, including removing things they may not like about the base design, but that can’t be sustainable when those changes won’t be supported by mechanics, and when companies using those cars forbid the use of cars with modified engines.