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.
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.
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.
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.
There really needs to be a “Linux” of browser engines.
Keep an eye on https://servo.org/
This… LOOKS AWESOME
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Can someone who is more knowledgeable about these things explain why I should be hyped for Servo?
So there are a few reasons I’m personally interested in it:
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.
Isn’t that gecko, Firefox’s engine?
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.
No, chromium is the Linux of browsers.
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Closer to the Windows kernel of browsers.
I’d argue that’s what Gecko is tbh
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When that source, open or otherwise, is unilaterally controlled by Google, that doesn’t really mean much
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.
Are people able to make meaningful contributions to the project upstream to steer the direction of the web as an open platform?
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.
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Is that not what Chromium is? An open source browser that anyone can adapt to suit their needs.
People are worried that Google controls the project. Anyone using Chromium is basically making their own version of Chrome but with extra features.