Ladybird has garnered a level of mainstream attention that SerenityOS never really managed to.
The browser has the potential to impact many more people, and the project is well funded by large investors.
It makes sense that Andreas would shift his focus to LadyBird at this point.
While Safari is busy being Safari and Firefox is busy eating glue in the corner, I'd love to see LadyBird become a real contender in the browser market.
I fully respect these reasons, they are logical and well said. But hopefully interest in SerenityOS doesn't taper off due to this. Kling was great at garnering interest with his YouTube videos where he'd go deep into bug fixing and feature development.
Certainly, the browser has the most potential and even immediate necessity for the sake of the open Web, but I would still like to daily drive SerenityOS some day. Its aesthetics and holistic architecture are a dream realised.
Windows is going down the toilet fast, and Linux lacks the holistic element, so having something that combines the greatest visual design language - mid to late 90s interface guidelines - with the powerful Unix shell would be a huge boon for desktop computing. (Yes OSX has great albeit modern UX with the Unix underpinnings but isn't OSS or affordable to the masses).
Linux (kernel I mean) is good enough. There were some scheduling problems with audio, but it's mostly resolved. The problem is GNU style. We need another GUI and that doesn't mean just replacing X with/or Wayland protocol. It means replacing GTK and QT too.
Isn't that basically ElementaryOS? Or is that not a group up rewrite?
Not really. Pantheon, elementary's desktop environment, is forked from gnome. So in that sense, it's very much a traditional linux desktop distro (not to belittle it, as they have put in a lot of worthwhile work into pantheon & the assorted apps)
Ah, I thought it was it's own thing. Oh well. I do think we're due for a commercial desktop Linux distro. Yes I think it should be paid. Something needs to take the place of Windows that isn't tied to specific hardware (MacOS) because Windows is getting unusable.
ChromeOS seems very polished under the hood.
It is fast and open source. But very tightly integrated into google and so I doubt, this will ever become a solid base for a new linux desktop.
Chromeos under the hood is just Linux
And ... what is just linux?
They use a custom kernel. A completely different display manager, process scheduling, startup etc.
But yeah, rsync works the same.
That exactyly what PopOS is doing. Cosmic is a new Desktop Envoirment for Wayland written in Rust using a toolkit named Iced.
The penguin kernel is indeed very nifty and boots nearly everywhere. Most importantly it is replete with battle-tested drivers.
Maybe the bold solution would be to port the Serenity userland + UI stack across to Linux and be very staunch about what gets into it. Essentially grafting the Linux kernel in place of the Serenity one, and using its UI Kit and WindowServer instead of GTK/QT/X/Wayland.
Maybe it might even be possible to preserve the logic and non-UI libraries of many applications, even if the UI required a complete rewrite.
A bit fantastical but just putting it out there.
Oh yes, a MacOS like design but open with Unix, that would be amazing!
macOS is unix...
And he seems to not want macOS type design. Unless you mean System 8/9.
Modern macOS design is reasonably consistent but with fewer visual cues - still a step above Windows post-7. And yes, I meant the bezels and skeuomorphism of earlier design - exemplified by Windows 9x-2k and System 8/9, while NeXT and IRIX also deserve a shout.
That was the plan for Étoilé but it didn't get traction for some reason.
MacOS is Unix -- a BSD-derived Unix operating system called "Darwin" underlies the user interface.
MacOS is only as good as its hardware integration. Lifting and shifting MacOS UX to another system would only be skin deep. Much of the simplicity (and ire to many technical users) of MacOS is because its deeps vertical integration.
People talk about Linux as if it's a monolithic OS and one team in some OS team sport. It's not. It's a kernel.
We've got lots of OSes built on top of that kernel: ChromeOS, Android, and all the distros that are largely different flavors of a GNU/GPL'ed user space, including Fedora, SteamOS etc.
This is fine. If you want a new OS with a "holistic" user space, well Linux is probably the easiest kernel to build it on, but you can't count on it being as free as the GNU user space, because it's still going to be expensive as hell to build, and whoever does it is going to want to recoup their investment many times over.
I think the chance that the GNU user space ever morphs into a "holistic" consumer operating system is basically zero due to how it's licensed, and the key is to understand that this is both fine and necessary.
If you want some other kind of more consumer friendly user space... I guess that starts with convincing some VCs they can make money off of it. They are not going to fund it out of the kindness of their hearts.
Personally I lost interest in consumer operating systems that are designed to limit freedom for the sake of profit, and became an exclusive Debian/Ubuntu/Mint user long ago. If you can be a programmer you can run these operating systems. The tradeoff is you lose the "holistic" and you gain freedom. The two are fundamentally incompatible I'd say so you have to make your choice.
OSX and Linux but no FreeBSD? Shameful.*
Edit: Should of been "disappointing". Leaving for intergity.
The audacity to call this shameful is striking to me. If you feel strongly enough that this free, open source, extremely limited resource project (working on one of the largest problem spaces..) doesn't support FreeBSD, port it yourself instead of casting shame on others for not doing it. Hopefully your comment is more lighthearted than I'm giving it credit for.
Stop acting like *BSD shouldn't catered for. I'm stick of the attitude of who feel that $OS should be treated as a third wheel.
That attitude is the reason why we live in such a monopolistic world. If your developing an application you should be catering to all systems otherwise we end up in the exact stalemate we have now.
Its great to say "do it yourself" but when every package is "do it yourself" -- it more resourceful then as if the developer targets the OS themselves.
If I am to port it myself and encounter a bug, I then need to engage with the developers which then takes time off their hands as if they were to develop for the OS themselves, resources wasted on both parties. And that's if the developer will even participate in aiding.
Then when the package is available you then have whole rounded application. It may take longer but heck we're not making a Netflix series here.
I hate the IT space we live in.
Linux has become the new Windows.
FreeBSD once peaked at a 0.01% desktop market share.
https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide...
So? You should still develop for.
Why? For this whole reason. What does it matter? You should target all audiences.
Why not?
Why not?
Because it's extra work.
More work than having to push a bug to the developer when making a custom package than the developer fixing the bug natively for that package?
Why BSD and not Haiku?
Yeah, why not.
You should target all audiences.
Here is a list of OSes[0]. Where do you draw the line on supporting these? Should every new project try to support all of these? Do you, doublerabbit, get to decide which OSes are important enough for support?
Or do you think the person who created the project and does all the work should be able to decide where to spend their free time?
It should be fairly straightforward to get it running on any mainstream *nix system. I only called out macOS and Linux specifically because we have developers actively using those systems day-to-day. :)
I know my comment comes out negative. Shameful wasn't the right word. It's disappointing that there is no target for *BSD.
I'm very respectful for you to attempt such a project. In no way am I dismissing your work but I see more and more projects becoming very mono orientated where it becomes a struggle for other OS's to adopt.
Why FreeBSD and not one of the other BSDs?
Good point. Going forward noted to not miss the others.
I've used all three but freebsd has so far been the only one that has stuck.
I'm sure someone will come and help with the port! It's just a matter of time (:
I hope there will be also a Windows port someday :P
Ladybird now targets Linux and macOS. The SerenityOS target is dropped.
Why dropping the SerenityOS target??
Does this mean that SerenityOS's Ladybird will need to continually pull patches from the new Ladybird project in order to keep development?
Also: is it really a fork if the new project gets to keep the name "Ladybird"? Will SerenityOS's browser need to be renamed, or there will be two diverging Ladybird projects with the same name? (Maybe a qualifier would help, like SerenityOS Ladybird vs Open Ladybird or something?)
SerenityOS's browser has never been named Ladybird AFAIK, it's always been just Browser.
https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/tree/master/Userland/...
Ladybird was the name used for to the cross-platform version of the browser.
https://awesomekling.github.io/Ladybird-a-new-cross-platform...
SerenityOS' browser began identifying itself as Ladybird last year or the year before in the UI, the folder was always called Browser.
It'll probably just be renamed back, or the "port" of Ladybird will always be built as part of the base system (which would make sense, so Serenity could continue getting updates to LibWeb and LibJS)
Would it be fair to assume this means the SerenityOS maintainers will have to pull LibWeb/LibJS changes in from Ladybird?
I think the fork has to do with the following item:
Unlike SerenityOS, Ladybird will have a relaxed NIH policy (instead of "no 3rd party code!"), and will leverage the greater OSS ecosystem.
SerenityOS wants to be an OS from scratch, to see how to do things better from existing implementations. When ladybird wants to target that OS as well, using 3rd party libraries would make it hard to stay compatible. Which is easier to do on just MacOS and Linux.
Ok this makes perfect sense. Thanks for pointing it out.
Does this mean that SerenityOS's Ladybird will need to continually pull patches from the new Ladybird project in order to keep development?
It will probably mean that Ladybird becomes a port. As for what happens to the LibWeb that's in SerenityOS right now, that's still undecided.
Also: is it really a fork if the new project gets to keep the name "Ladybird"? Will SerenityOS's browser need to be renamed, or there will be two diverging Ladybird projects with the same name? (Maybe a qualifier would help, like SerenityOS Ladybird vs Open Ladybird or something?)
SerenityOS' browser will probably go back to being called "Browser", like it was before.
SerenityOS already has Ports directory for 3rd party software, I guess ladybirds will go there.
I'd say ladybird moving out is a big incentive to get a packaging system up and running.
As mentioned by Andreas, it's because SerenityOS does not depend on third party libraries and part of the new ethos of Ladybird is to decrease "not invented here" syndrome.
my understanding is that serenity will focus less on the web browser in the first place. it might just go back to being a simple html viewer with rudimentary js support?
my hope is that they take this as an opportunity to come up with a purpose built "web" stack for serenity? use it as an excuse to reinvent the web and "fix" the mistakes that were made? maybe by actually Putting Scheme In The Browser rather than js?
Yeah that's a little bit concerning, honestly. It really sounds more like an abandonment of SerenityOS, rather than a shift in emphasis
because the main focus on serenityos is writing code. hence no 3rd party code policy. the fork is mostly to make the browser use 3rd party code, hence it is now no better than just porting Mozilla. i think this will fork both forever
Damn I was worried for a second there, fearing some sort of falling out with the community. But this is awesome news! Ladybird is a far more important project to focus on imho.
Given that it dropped serenity as a target, it does seem there is something more to this story…
There really isn't anything more to it. :)
By dropping SerenityOS as a target, Ladybird is free to make use of 3rd party libraries that don't currently work on SerenityOS. And keep in mind, SerenityOS would be unable to integrate Ladybird in this new state anyway, since SerenityOS has a strict "no 3rd party code" policy.
(Also nice: it stops being necessary to wait 30+ minutes for multiple CI runs on SerenityOS every time you post a browser engine pull request!)
In time, I'd love to see Ladybird come back as a port on SerenityOS.
It does have ports though, so for people who want ladybird there is a route to running it.
Possibly that for Ladybird to move forwards more quickly, it needs access to OS API's or Graphics stuff that Serenity can't yet provide? (I'm just spitballing here, I don't know much about OS development)
To take it a step further, due to the fact that Andreas is being sponsored to work on Ladybird full time by a few companies, if it's inherently also tied to the development of Serenity (since its a primary target) that might make him concerned that there's a clash of responsibilities there - he might not want any sponsors pulling out or arguing that he's spending their money on Serenity instead of Ladybird.
This is all just assumptions however, and regardless of the reasons I think he's doing the right thing.
Wondering about that too, but to be fair, he probably doesn't use it as his primary OS (none of the developers does I think), so with Serenty mostly being a development project and the interest shifting (back to) developing web browsers it seems logical to focus on these targets.
I've been working on projects myself where the primary target switched, because I noticed it's a bit draining to keep supporting something "just" because I love it. Dropping a target usually doesn't mean it cannot be used there anymore, but simply that you don't feel comfortable guaranteeing support.
I don't know if that's the case here, only that it doesn't necessitate bad feelings.
Given that it was also stated that it won't be self-contained anymore that's also a very good technical reason. And I totally get that if you want to create a new browser with a new layout engine not wanting to re-invent every audio, video, image decoder, not wanting to reinvent all the wheels makes it already a huge project and I'd assume it's hard to guarantee all of these things will also work and compile on Serenity, which despite doing an amazing job at porting might get stuck here and there. I mean, see the OpenBSD and Rust(up) story.
Unlike SerenityOS, Ladybird will have a relaxed NIH policy (instead of "no 3rd party code!")
This requires that it becomes a Port rather than a core part of Serenity.
I might sound jaded, but I'd be more excited for a Chromium fork that focuses on hackability instead of a brand new browser that'll take somewhere between years to ∞ to be even remotely useful. I get why that'd be less fun to work on though.
Qutebrowser, Nyxt even better for hackability.
Isn’t there already quite many Chromium forks? They all have the same issue - the more your code diverges, more additional work it will be. And security patches start lagging.
Why not directly fork WebKit, as the Orion browser did?
There are plenty of Chromium forks, you can go use those. Or just make your own.
I guess SerenityOS is somewhat doomed now? I never saw this kind of move ending well, honestly. Even when not involved, having the original around is always a great boon to the popularity of a project.
I for one would love to see the SerenityOS GUI ported to Wayland on Windows. It's precisely what I ask for from an OS honestly.
I don't know, there's quite a few open source projects where the original author stepped down and it's thriving. Take Arch Linux for example. Before that Gentoo - and there I think the main "problem" with popularity is that self-compiling fell out of fashion.
There's also tons of software projects where this happened, just more quietly. Usually when there is no drama, nobody reports about it. So I'd assume it's usually more a problem, if there is drama, but even here I can think about projects surviving despite it. See OwnCloud/NextCloud.
Honestly, I can't think of projects where this did not end well. Given that SerentyOS is still a thing, despite Kling pulling out a while ago (in the sense of only working on the browser) it really doesn't sound like the project is on its last breath now.
Given the history of getting people into OS development - even more so than Haiku, which also did a pretty good job at that I think Kling leaves with a multitude of people stepping in.
Define ‘doomed’. As far as I can tell, SerenityOS did everything (and much more) than Andreas ever hoped it would.
It was never meant to be a ‘mass-market’ general purpose OS, but could still turn into one (or be the basis that one is built from) if the right maintainers steer it that way. But even if it doesn’t I’m glad that it existed, and that it spawned Ladybird is pretty crazy and awesome.
Yeah it's hard to see this not as the beginning of the end for SerenityOS
BDFALAISM
Beneficial Dictator For As Long As It Suits Me
:)
Yes, that is always implied. Even Guido, the original BFDL, stepped down. Linus will probably retire at some point (I hope, considering the alternative would be death before retirement at a relatively young age). Etc.
considering the alternative would be death
Which is exactly what happened to the first "dictator for life" (without the B) ;-). Even at more or less the exact age where one would expect someone to retire today.
See also: Julius Caesar, Ides of March
Edit: Just to make this clear, I also find the "I'm doing this as long as it works out and makes sense" to be the only useful approach to the "title" of BDFL.
As Long As it Suits the Community, I guess. I might be naive, but the reasons he gave for his decision don't strike me as selfish.
Oh, this is interesting. As a GitHub sponsor of Andreas for a while now, what does that mean for sponsors? Are we funding exclusively work on LadyBird? (Had we been, for some time already?) Does the SerenityOS project have a GitHub sponsor?
I personally had grown more interested in the browser anyway, so I'll just keep sponsoring Andreas, I suppose, unless this all is a prelude to VC investment or a big company acquisition or something...
Thank you so much for sponsoring me! :)
As I wrote in the announcement, I've already been working primarily on Ladybird for ~2 years already, so you have indeed been sponsoring Ladybird development by sponsoring me.
SerenityOS doesn't have a GitHub Sponsors itself, but it does use Polar to allow anyone to directly sponsor work on specific issues. See https://polar.sh/SerenityOS
And don't worry, there won't be some VC investment or big company buyout.
And don't worry, there won't be some VC investment or big company buyout.
I fell for that trick 27 times already, you can't fool me! j/k
Thanks for the ride, wish you the best of luck.
What's the plan for Jakt, the programming language? Does it fall under the SerenityOS umbrella? Will LadyBird continue to use C++? The blog post doesn't mention it.
It has come up from time to time. From the perspective of LadyBird it is an experiment that ran its course and LadyBird will likely just be c++.
From the perspective of serenity os it is still there and mostly compatible if someone is interested to come along and push it forward to be used in the os.
Given that the main author is looking into another language, maybe not much left anyway.
https://www.sophiajt.com/search-for-easier-safe-systems-prog...
Ladybird now targets Linux and macOS. The SerenityOS target is dropped.
Aww :(
I can understand forking the browser from the OS, but I'm a bit sad about this. I hope SerenityOS can have a first-class browser in line with the OS philosophy.
To be fair though. SerentyOS given the size of its user base has a ton of ports already and since even super niche projects like NetBSD can pull off having one of the best (and certainly the most portable) ports collections out there I'd assume that SerentyOS will be able to pull off keeping a browser compatible that was originally made for this OS - if there is interest of course.
I tried Ladybird browser for fun, and it looks more stable than when I ran it for the last time, which is great!
It doesn't properly load the given substack (it seems to stop loading it in the middle), but it looks fine. :)
Surprisingly, loading Google Maps even work, but I can't seem to do more than move the map around. Github even works!
So far it seems better than Servo in throwing random sites at it, but I last tried Servo years ago so it's not fair. I guess I will try Servo now for the heck of it
edit: yeah Servo still seems worse, but it loads the whole substack post :)
Github even works!
Unsurprisingly github is one of the developer's most frequently used sites when dogfooding the browser so it'll probably always work :)
This could be a good move, if it frees resources that would then be allocated for the OS itself. To me SerenityOS as a x86 OS is interesting but redundant, while to me would immediately catch attention if ported to ARM or RISC-V and other embedded platforms. Many companies already use sluggish Android or web based solutions to build instrumentation screens and other vertical applications where one needs to show GUI primitives, and to me a native, fast alternative is badly needed. SerenityOS doesn't bring all the cruft that would be completely unnecessary in those systems, hence my idea that in some cases it could become the right tool for the job.
SerenityOS has (partially) working ports for both ARM and RISC-V already:
https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/tree/master/Kernel/Ar...
Feels like an end of an Era, I used to enjoy Andreas's SerenityOS YouTube videos as he dropped down and implemented different features of the OS during a video coding session, adding code from UI, emulators, game ports, JS & Jakt programming languages, JITs all the way down to the kernel. SerenityOS was unique in that regard with the entire code-base maintained in a single source tree.
I expect interest in SerenityOS will now taper off as a result of this, especially now that SerenityOS is no longer a target for Ladybird.
It was a journey for sure. I never contributed code, but color schemes and emojis. But I always enjoy Andreas' Serenity videos, even some coding videos were good (I cannot code). These are special and will forever live in my heart.
This is one of the kindest "I'm forking xyz" posts I've ever read. The whole thing is some level of heartwarming, and unlike a lot of the other posts in the same range actually makes me consider contributing to either Ladybird or SerenityOS!
Because it's not done because of anger, or anything similar. Instead it's observed that a small project became a big one, and started the cannibalize the bigger project.
So the developer decided to take the growing project to its own space and let the other project thrive, too.
It's done out of love, if nothing else.
I'm confused, what is the project management structure of SerenityOS now, then?
SerenityOS is now controlled by the same group of maintainers that have been managing it for the last couple of years.
What happens next is up to them & the community to decide. :)
So, in order to write a new browser you first have to write (as a training exercise) a new OS.
Not the fastest way, but it seems to work. Best wishes to Andreas.
Sad to hear. Hacking on SerenityOS together with Andreas was some of the most fun I've ever had. Wishing him the best of luck with Ladybird, and hoping he will come back once in a while (become the TYVC? :).
Make sure you check out the Andreas Kling channel on YouTube also,
https://www.youtube.com/@awesomekling/videos
Where he does a monthly update on developing Ladybird. You can learn about the things he's overcome, but also the problems he's having.
Most recent updates,
Ladybird browser update (May 2024) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4YBMjlGWRc)
Ladybird browser update (Apr 2024) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBl-fa-YJFE)
Ladybird browser update (Mar 2024) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKHopzDtElY)
It makes sense if he wants to make a useful web browser and leverage third party technologies for it, Serenity is totally from scratch. This should mean more time being spent on better problems in the web browser through reinventing fewer wheels and probably speed up the development of a new browser engine, which seems pretty interesting to me.
Ladybird looks amazing and is moving quickly. Without the linkage to SerenityOS, I even feel like looking at the source and seeing if I can get a handle on what's going on.
Looks like the idea of writing a new browser engine, or of forking Firefox, wasn't an absurdly impossible thing that would require billions of dollars. If this inspires somebody to take up that charge again, or to pick up Servo from the table, that would be wonderful too.
I'm seriously impressed by the amount of progress this project has made (and its apparently helped with finding issues in the various specs that constitute a modern browser) so I wish him all the best in this new direction
I really hope Ladybird will become the browser that will put HaikuOS on the map of desktops!
The web is eating everything. Maybe every app could be structured as if it's a web app or worker service to do everything people expect while being minimal? It's interesting that the OS layer could be even thinner than SerenityOS. With 'Local first' capabilities and the expanding role of web technologies, this is not only possible but could be a good idea. The new Ladybird project will be really interesting; it could be a real alternative browser people want! Being able to boot a good browser on multiple operating systems, such as a minimal BSD, a minimal Linux from scratch style OS, or even a stripped-down SerenityOS variation, is exciting. This could be more secure and easier to innovate with because it has a better level of abstractions to draw upon. The bootable web OS projects like Palm webOS, the booting Gecko/Firefox OS projects, and Chrome OS could offer interesting lessons for Ladybird. Running a browser in a VM, on metal, or on an existing host OS like BSD or Linux is very useful. This approach could be secure and powerful enough to attract users for security, speed, or powerful user-centric reasons (not corporate/adware-centric). Kling and the community he's assembled is "at risk" of helping solve some serious use-cases for people and industries while having fun! Google's OS development with Android, Chrome OS, and Fuchsia may seem complicated compared to what a Ladybird OS could do. Android is complicated and advanced, but in practice, it's bloated and error-prone with terrible complexity. For example, Pixel users miss calls due to bugs, and there are problems calling emergency numbers. Think about the array of Android and iOS exploits. The attack surfaces and codebases are too big! Given its complexity, I can see Google switching to working on Ladybird or a Go/Rust variant. Maybe even Apple will consider this. LLMs are now capable of semi-automatic porting with their large context windows. I think things could change fast, and maybe we'll have secure devices in our pockets one day. I wonder what Alan Kay and his fellow researches would have to say about this.
yo andreas, it takes a lot of courage to acknowledge the situation and i truly applaud you for that. i will keep on cheering you from the sideline.
I feel like this should've been done a while ago. Community was quite split by two projects and it felt like SerenityOS was dragging Ladybird development down, both from sponsor and developer point of view.
I'm glad Andreas had committed to this, for the best to both projects.
I guess that also means that Jakt language will also stay within SerenityOS realm.
Thank you Andreas for creating both of these projects and for all your work on both of them and for all of the videos you’ve been making along the way while working on them.
I think this is likely to kill both projects
Would you finally consider publishing nightly binaries?
With SerenjtyOS you always had the "build it yourself" approach which was probably meant to only attract technical users.
Have you considered doing a rewrite (or a partial one) now that third-party libraries can be used? To take all your learnings and new opportunities and use them to rearchitect things.
I agree (apart from the popular hate on Firefox). Ladybird is promising and has a much bigger chance to make an impact than SerenityOS.
But it's a bit disappointing to see that it's still pretty much a one-man project. Especially to have a chance to get close to the performance of Chrome and Firefox, it will need a large investment.
The amount of engineering resources poured into just making JavaScript fast is mind-numbing. But even "just" providing a light, mostly standards-compliant browser with a sorta-good-enough performance would be great.
Edit: Just saw a video from a few days ago talking about JS performance. Apparently the target is reaching JavaScriptCore performance, without JIT enabled. Disappointing, but understandable.
I think the Firefox hate is completely justified. At this point the only positive thing about Firefox is that "at least it's not Chrome".
As a Firefox user, this exactly.
The amount of things that now need to be toggled off on a new install are approaching Windows “telemetry” levels: disable sponsored shortcuts on homepage, disable experimental “Studies”, sponsored suggestions in search bar, “suggested extensions”, Pocket, and the list goes on.
I really need to look into a privacy friendly fork of FF..
I don't use it myself, but Librewolf is a pretty popular fork that attempts to be private out of the box and is usually updated pretty quickly.
Thanks. Finally got around to installing Librewolf and it works great.
Sensible defaults as Firefox should be.
Yes, or Waterfox [1].
[1] https://www.waterfox.net/
I will definitely second this. I moved over to librewolf last year and love it. I’m glad Mozilla is staying in business though. I know not every organization has my beliefs and I can live with that
I'd love to make the jump too, just that I rely upon FF sync too much. It's handy getting your bookmarks and other details on mobile devices. The other forks look to be desktop only.
On recent hardware, how much "performance" do we really need? Wouldn't almost any compliant browser be basically good enough?
One would think so, but some browsers do not handle well repaints or do it prematurely. I've been testing a fediverse platform against a plethora of browsers, and I'm always surprised at the differences. It's not terrible, but some do take their time.
There's several decades-old sayings to the effect of what Intel giveth, Microsoft taketh away, or similar observations about the software side of computing spending all the hardware improvements and more.
To this general principle you can add browsers and websites; what the browser giveth, the websites taketh away. You may think browsers are slow... they really aren't! There's a staggering, even arguably insane, amount of optimization in there. But then we write websites that are barely adequate, and load them up with ad scripts that aren't even barely adequate, and blame the browsers for being slow.
Write yourself an old-school 1998-style static website without a big pile of fancy features, give yourself solid .css and .js caching and use it judiciously, and the browsers can blast content to the screen blazingly fast, for all the work it is doing.
If you even could feed a 2024 web site to a 1998 browser, you'd probably be able to eat a meal while it was trying to render facebook.
LadyBird author posted a couple of days ago a demo of twitter and he himself admitted that it's painfully slow.
As someone developing web games, my answer is no.
As an embedded developer it always makes me sad to see physicists and engineers pushing the limits of physics to make faster hardware, just for devs to squander that power with lazy programming.
I don't know much about this project and I have never used it. But in my experience as a developer and user of software I couldn't disagree more.
The longer something can stay a one-person project, the better! Nothing kills creativity, innovation, and velocity faster than having to make every decision by committee.
Big communities are great when a project is in its maturity and mostly needs tending and slow evolution. They mitigate the risk of a single developer getting bored and walking away, or turning into a murderous wacko, or attempting to monetize the project to death. Not naming any names.
But when something is being built from scratch? Give me a single developer with a fat internet connection, alone in a cabin in the woods with a shed out back full of Red Bull :)
One person can get surprisingly far, but there's a limit beyond which no single human will scale. Getting to the v8 performance is IMHO such an example. You might be OK with a browser which has a noticeably subpar performance, but it will likely stifle mainstream adoption (which again, might be OK for you and that's fine).
There's no doubt in my mind that Andreas could achieve that by himself. He's worked professionally on webkit, and implemented a JS interpreter, a JS bytecode interpreter, and a JS JIT all by himself after all. Also let's not forget that V8 is open-source, all their optimizations are available for others to see and implement.
But to be clear this isn't a one man project, he hired a few contributors to work full time on it. Sure, it's a small team, but as said in sibling comments a small team has much more velocity.
We're long past the time that we should be using one type of app for text plus a bit of Javascript and another for running apps that are hosted on a remote server. I would definitely use a fast, lightweight, privacy-oriented browser for sites like HN or viewing local HTML files.
Have to admit the Firefox hate is mostly irrelevant. its from a place of disappointment with Mozilla more than hate really.
I agree that the amount of work and competition LadyBird is facing from Chrome alone is staggering, but at the same time, I'll always root for the little guy in tech, since imo thats where real innovation comes from.
Yeah I agree. Would be nice to see a browser option that is not 20+ years old. People say it’s not doable but this here is a real opportunity.
Chrome is less than 20 years old.
KHTML+KJS released in 1998, via WebKit from 2001, in 2008 it gained the Chrome name, but the code has more than 20 years of legacy.
Why do you want the oldest code to be less than 20 years old? Why is that "nice"?
Because 20 years is like half the history of modern computing. A lot has changed in a small amount of time
So what? Code doesn't rust.
It doesn't but it accumulates cruft and since then new libraries emerge which you might be able to reuse instead of writing your own thing. Just as an example: Boost first appeared in 1999 so very likely at least early on no one used it.
There’s very little WebKit / KHTML code left in Chrome.
There's very little NT 3.1 code left in Windows, but it's still clear how old that project is.
All unixes are descendants of original Unix from PDP-7 days. Why does it matter?
...ok the /bin /usr/bin nonsense still stays after decades, maybe you have a point
KHTML was born in 1998 and became the foundation of Chrome and Safari. All major browsers are over a decade old, or just skins of decade+ old engines.
Chrome forked from Webkit, which forked from KHTML, which apparently dates from 4th November 1998, so Chrome's base is 25 years and 7 months old tomorrow.
Hmm, why is there no mention of that in the splitting announcement?
Did said large investors trigger the drop of SerenityOS because they don't want to waste their resources on a niche hobby platform?
Ladybird does not have investors, only sponsors/donors. We have received some really generous donations in the past, for example $100,000 from Shopify in 2023 which allowed me to hire a few of our contributors to work full time on the project. :)
Sponsors have no direct influence over the project, but I obviously feel a strong moral obligation to put 100% of the funds towards improving Ladybird and nothing else.
100k is not "well funded by large investors" anyway :)
Sadly it is, when we are talking about independent open source projects.
Apologies, I did mean "well sponsored" not well funded, my mistake :') You're doing awesome work and I'm really excited for you and the project! All the best :)