this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2024
420 points (92.9% liked)

Linux

48003 readers
1025 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Finally, another web engine is being developed to compete with Chromium and Firefox (Gecko), and they're also working on a browser that will use it.

Here's the maintainer talking about the current state of the project, and a demo of the current functionality

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] slacktoid@lemmy.ml 117 points 2 months ago (4 children)

Hot take: Since it's a BSD licensed browser at some point in the future, there's going to be a company that funds it brings it to mainstream with their flavor, and then will over throw chromium in time. Replace an 'evil' with another 'evil'.

[–] sorrybookbroke@sh.itjust.works 56 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

All hail the cuck license, ensuring we end up back at the same place every single time.

Good intentions and all that

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Jumuta@sh.itjust.works 24 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I like this project and just hope it was gplv3 or some similar copyleft license

[–] mariusafa@lemmy.sdf.org 25 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Ladybird is licences under BSD-clause 2. Which allows privatization of the code.

IMO a web browser should be GPLv3, specially to not allow DRM bullshit in the browser.

[–] amju_wolf@pawb.social 15 points 2 months ago (2 children)

AGPL, to prevent streaming (while not sharing the code).

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] mariusafa@lemmy.sdf.org 17 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Yeah not a good licence at all for an independent browser. Idk if Servo MPL is a good license either. Do you know of any web browser that is GPL?

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] Vincent@feddit.nl 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Luckily Gecko still exists. And who knows, maybe Servo will make it one day (but the odds are stacked against both them and Ladybird anyway).

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] jaxiiruff@lemmy.zip 78 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] jimmy90@lemmy.world 19 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] aaa@lemmy.sdf.org 27 points 2 months ago

verso is the web browser, servo is the web engine

[–] Asudox@lemmy.world 57 points 2 months ago (2 children)

It's nice and all but usage of Swift is kind of not great.

[–] BaumGeist@lemmy.ml 31 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Why is Swift bad?

Also, I noticed the project has taken donations from mostly non-foss companies. Let's hope they stand by their principles

[–] TerkErJerbs@lemm.ee 94 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (9 children)

Shopify (i.e. Shittify) being their top donor already has me looking sideways at this project. They'll invest in anything they think they can get an edge with and if something starts to happen they'll fuck it up and wallstreet-ify it as fast as possible if they can.

Their (Shopify's) guru founder Tobi made a huge NFT play that went absolutely nowhere while I still worked there. They spent a lot of time and money on it, right before they laid several thousand people off.

[–] Asudox@lemmy.world 24 points 2 months ago (4 children)

Oh great. Now I'm losing hope in this project even more.

[–] TerkErJerbs@lemm.ee 16 points 2 months ago

I mean I hope Ladybird devs do a great build and go their own way without being corrupted by their donors and all that, don't get me wrong. But whenever I see that dumb shopping bag logo I get the no feelings.

You can also read up on how the vast majority of Mozilla's funding has been coming from Google for a very long time, and draw your own conclusions from that fact.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (8 replies)
[–] Asudox@lemmy.world 14 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (17 children)

Welp, I haven't seen anyone learn Swift other than for Apple stuff these days. So I wonder how many can actually contribute to the code. It's also made by Apple, so yeah. It would have been more performant and secure (both of which are pretty important in a browser) if it was written in a more low level language. For example Rust.

load more comments (17 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Aatube@kbin.melroy.org 52 points 2 months ago (8 children)

Sounds fun, but I wish there were more people who'd invest in making Firefox's Gecko more easy to use (stretch goal: revive Proton, which is Electron but Firefox) instead of pushing a ton of effort into inventing a new thing.

That said, this is coming from SerenityOS (specifically, the founder and basically the entire community concentrating on building its browser instead of hacking the OS, resulting in a split), so I understand that it might be a lot harder to port large codebases to a new OS instead of than starting a new one.

Edit: It's Positron, not Proton

[–] IrritableOcelot@beehaw.org 26 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

Well we wouldn't want Proton, it would be 2000x less lightweight than electron! /s

It seems to me that Tauri is maybe a better direction to invest resources in than a direct electron-but-Firefox. Its lighter weight and better sandboxed, and can presumably be configured to run with a Gecko engine instead of a chromium-based webview. I have no idea its status, but geckoview does seem to exist.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (7 replies)
[–] joel_feila@lemmy.world 46 points 2 months ago (4 children)

As someone insecure in their masculinity I don't know if u would use ladybird. Now if it was MANbird I would.

[–] arken@lemmy.world 37 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Sure, nothing is more masculine than having a preference for men.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
[–] dataprolet@lemmy.dbzer0.com 34 points 2 months ago (58 children)

The devs have some problematic views, mainly transphobic and misogynistic.

[–] blind3rdeye@lemm.ee 43 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (5 children)

Is this because they used "he" instead of "they" in the build instructions? ... They changed that and acknowledged the mistake. Surely that's enough. It's the fucking build instructions. I think we can probably find it in our hearts to forgive them.

[edit] Just in case people think I'm joking. I'm not. As far as I'm aware, the critical incident that that has resulted in people calling Ladybird devs anti-trans is that they wrote 'he' instead of 'they' in the build instructions. That's what caused the original outrage. And as far as I'm aware, there have been no other incidents. But please, if there is something of substance that I'm not aware of, post about it here.

[–] apotheotic@beehaw.org 48 points 2 months ago

To be clear, nobody was outraged by the devs using gendered language. The outrage was because they rejected multiple PRs to correct it under the guise of it being "political".

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] data1701d@startrek.website 41 points 2 months ago (15 children)

Also, the use of AI-generated images on their website.

[–] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

So?

For many small project is AI/copied images or no images at all.

When you do not have money you are not hiring a 2000€/month artist to do imagery for your website. You go online to copy something or nowadays you can use AI to wrap it up. It's a tool at people's disposition like any other.

And before anyone comes talking about copyright laws... shall I present them my 10 TB hard drive of pirated media? Human culture is to be shared, not gatekeeped.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (14 replies)
load more comments (55 replies)
[–] mexicancartel@lemmy.dbzer0.com 27 points 2 months ago

There was a gpl licensed browser engine someone by hobby is writing from scratch. I think theese companies supporting ladybird just do so because of license that they can proprietarify(like chromium)

[–] nawordar@lemmy.ml 25 points 2 months ago (8 children)

How is it progressing so fast compared to Servo? Isn't Servo being developed for a longer time?

load more comments (8 replies)
[–] dsilverz@thelemmy.club 20 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It's interesting to see a new browser engine aside from Gecko and Chromium, especially with all the conundrum surrounding the Manifest v2 support.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] bouh@lemmy.world 14 points 2 months ago (1 children)

What's the problem with the gecko engine?

[–] tehbilly@lemmy.dbzer0.com 28 points 2 months ago (4 children)

What's the problem with the blink engine?

Multiple implementations is good for everyone.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] rekabis@lemmy.ca 13 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (6 children)

We don't have anyone actively working on Windows support, and there are considerable changes required to make it work well outside a Unix-like environment.

We would like to do Windows eventually, but it's not a priority at the moment.

This is how you make “critical mass” adoption that much more difficult.

As much as I love Linux, if you are creating a program to be used by everyone and anyone, you achieve adoption inertia and public consciousness penetration by focusing on the largest platform first. And at 72% market share, that would be Windows.

I hope this initiative works. I really do. But intentionally ignoring three-quarters of the market is tantamount to breaking at least one leg before the starting gate even opens. This browser is likely to be relegated to being a highly niche and special-interest-only browser with minuscule adoption numbers, which means it will be virtually ignored by web developers and web policy makers.

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 28 points 2 months ago

Linux users tend to give much better bug reports than Windows users (if they do at all). That alone is probably a good enough reason to do Linux first. There are many more good reasons when the first goal is getting it functional and not getting as many users as possible (who will probably hate it if they're not a technically skilled user because there will be bugs).

You're making an assumption their first priority is the number of users. I would suspect that isn't true, and they're aware Windows has more users.

[–] leopold@lemmy.kde.social 17 points 2 months ago

LadyBird is an unusable pre-alpha-quality web browser. The fact that they haven't bothered porting to Windows yet is both thoroughly unsurprising and entirely meaningless. In its current state, it wouldn't become popular either way. But I guess Linux users have this weird inferiority complex where everything must instantly be dropped to port to Windows even when it makes little sense to do so.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] ben_dover@lemmy.ml 12 points 2 months ago (6 children)

i'd like to see a revival of webkit and an open source browser that uses it

[–] leopold@lemmy.kde.social 28 points 2 months ago

WebKit isn't dead and is being used by GNOME Web.

load more comments (5 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›