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Ladybird: a truly independent web browser

Ladybird is a brand-new browser & web engine. Driven by a web standards first approach, Ladybird aims to render the modern web with good performance, stability and security.

From the non-profit announcement:

The world needs a browser that puts people first, contributes to open standards using a brand new engine, and is free from advertising's influence.

This is why I='ve co-founded the Ladybird Browser Initiative with Andreas and my family has pledged $1M to support Ladybird's development. I believe in Ladybird and I believe in Andreas' vision, and I hope you'll help us support an open, independent browser that supports you.

Chris Wanstrath

GitHub Founder & former CEO

Lots of big promises. Will they be able to deliver? I sure hope so.

https://ladybird.org/

Posted in: s/privacy

🛰️ lufte

Jul 02 · 7 weeks ago · 👍 mozz, tenno-seremel, allknowingfrog · 🎉 2

25 Comments ↓

🚀 stack · Jul 02 at 21:50:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40856791

🚀 stack · Jul 02 at 21:55:

For any foreseeable future, using a boutique browser makes you unique to anyone surveiling... The golden age of fingerprinting privacy was when Firefox held 75 percent of the market.

💎 istvan · Jul 02 at 23:33:

No legacy support == Don't care. I can run Falkon on a decade-old laptop with Haiku. And for everything else there's lynx/w3m.

Anyone supporting Javascript and not targeting ancient hardware is going to end up delivering more bloat.

🛰️ lufte [OP] · Jul 03 at 00:28:

What would prevent this from running in old hardware? Genuine question.

And I agree on the surveiling point, but we still need alternatives to the current Blink monopoly.

💎 istvan · Jul 03 at 00:36:

They said specifically they are targeting the hardware that will be common in however many years off they see their release date.

That's not to say it is guaranteed to not run on old hardware. But it is saying the average computer they expect to have running Ladybird will be 64-bit with 32GB of RAM.

🐦 wasolili [...] · Jul 03 at 01:50:

I've loosely followed SerenityOS updates and as such I've watched many of the Ladybird update videos. it'll be cool to see how/if those updates ramp up following this news.

They've got a ways to go (they're currently in the "it wouldn't be an update video without Ladybird crashing during filming" stage) but it's heartening to see it get some financial backing and goals beyond "fun toy for fun os"

I wouldn't consider using it to be related to privacy yet, though, given fingerprinting concerns and (as of yet) no major privacy-preserving features.

🚀 decant_ · Jul 03 at 02:47:

The full web standard is unimplementable. I think the best they can manage is to unbreak a few complex sites. From what I can see privacy will be an after thought for ladybird. In any case, mad respect for having the gut to start a browser project from scratch!

💎 istvan · Jul 03 at 04:02:

Just do HTML3/4/5 and CSS. Ignore JavaScript and it’s very doable and can run on very old hardware. Everything wrong with the web from tracking to advertising to complexity to poor performance is all the fault of JavaScript.

It isn’t needed, and developers who can’t live without it aren’t doing anything good for society.

🚀 stack · Jul 03 at 16:38:

And if you do any banking, bill paying or even just checking if your credit card was jacked while paying for dinner... Not only must you enable JS, but also turn off most privacy oriented add-ons.

I use Tor for casual browsing and a completely unprotected browser for banking. The world has gone insane.

🚀 fluffygoatboy · Jul 03 at 18:22:

eh. the original dev (before he left) made his own thoughts on inclusive language known, so they've got a ways to prove they're not ran by terrible people. that said, for now I'll stick with LibreWolf.

💎 istvan · Jul 03 at 19:20:

@blah_blah_blah Let them fail. None of those were essential parts of hypertext.

The World Wide Web was hypertext documents distributed over hypertext transport protocol. Maybe with some CSS to suggest some display preferences.

That it has been raped into a permanent government tracking system powered by JavaScript state machines piggybacking on hypertext while negating the whole purpose of hypertext documents is irrelevant.

Much like overseas call centers full of people who can’t speak the language they are offering tech support in, this is something that we can make go away if we refuse to participate and encourage everyone else to do the same.

🚀 stack · Jul 03 at 19:42:

Other than spending the million donated and whatever other stupid money donated, there is absolutely no reason for this project.

😎 flipperzero · Jul 04 at 18:47:

Instead of dismissing newly adaptable software via anecdotal analysis influenced by preferential biased hasty speculation, which I'm SURE tech giants prefer to foster against anything threatening the market dominance of their products which we should be encouraging to act on rather than discrediting, I find it admirable there's some effort being made to cut into the usership dominated by Blink and Webkit. I'll be cloning the repo in order to get it together to run, will be testing it for some time, I'll post back here periodically with my thoughts on using it so I can make a clearer assessment of whether or not It achieves what it means to approach or if it falls flat continuing to pander to broken standards.

🚀 stack · Jul 04 at 18:57:

The probability of this browser becoming good enough to be a general-purpose browser is extremely low, and according to the maintainer, it's a toy and likely to stay that way for the foreseeable future. Given the history (tired of Serentity, doing this), probability of getting tired of this as well is high (not meant as an insult, I have many projects I got tired of). Of course after the million is spent.

Is it a good thing? Is writing another Lisp implementation a good thing when there are several excellent ones already? Some people say -- the more, the better; others say you are wasting time and talent.

I say it's pointless, but that is just an opinion.

P.S. I've written a Lisp and dozens of Forth compilers, and enjoy doing pointless things for fun. No one gave me a million dollars yet, but it doesn't stop me from making pointless things. I recognize others' pointless things, and generally avoid them.

😎 flipperzero · Jul 04 at 19:18:

Is having only TWO options in the ecosystem of browsers that used to be many TRULY beneficial for open software? Does belittling the statements of a maintainer and their project's goals as "a toy" really conducive to helping developers find a better solution? It's easy to continue to dismiss something based, again, off a static perspective. It's harder to continue to remain complacent to EEE-influenced gameplans straight from M s book. This very same dismissal is the same as many opponants to Gemini attacked the project with, with misconceptions similar to what's being expressed lmfao.

There are many opinions, and few options in clients, I think there are more opinions to make than "Not worth it"

🚀 stack · Jul 04 at 19:24:

I suppose my real opinion is "I just don't care about any of it, and hope it all burns to hell", as far as the Web is concerned.

😎 flipperzero · Jul 04 at 19:48:

@stack I can dig that view, I occupy much the same, but that becomes a different subject entirely. I'll present this possibility, that said: that approach -might- not be fair to the smallnet! (Inconcievable! :O It shocks me too. :P)

The true internet origins, DARPAnet and BBS, remote telnet and phone modems, paved the way for online services to emerge publicly with architecture behind their development evolving. Gopher was the first to beat Xanadu to the punch offering a hypertext document solution with extensibility to features assigned to programs external to client. Hypertext became the web, adapting client-dependant features first in mosaic, taking over the market. --cont'd

😎 flipperzero · Jul 04 at 19:54:

(2/3) That was arguably the first move from taking a network meant to develop within open range closed within the confines of commercial limits. The web itself was meant to foster an open standard to developers inroducing innovations on the spec, turning out to in-fighting for sake of corporate interest, much the same taking place even in the GNU wars and M$ looking at what the Web did to Gopher, thinking to do the same to Mosaic and netspace with IE, and continuing the cycle up to this point.

All this to say, yes, it's possibly misguided to remain playing within a broken system already corrupt by those previous bad actors. It's worse to stand still, and let it get worse. This is why Gemini-

😎 flipperzero · Jul 04 at 20:02:

(3/3) -materialized, not in the interest of replacing the web, so much as being one alternative in a claustrophobic climate occupied by suits and lounge lizard tech bro closet-suits masquarading as fledgling smalltime programmers (like a lot of us here!). It's not lost on me the irony of the implication by what's being painted of the project, the basis in origin from crowd funding, but we have to remember: it IS one of us. Serenity was NOT a corporate effort like Ubuntu or Fedora. It's enthusiasts who take interest in seeing how far developing a new ecosystem can go. The project has now split off, and can re-introduce open developmet in the web same as here. It can bounce back. More might follow.

🚀 stack · Jul 04 at 20:54:

I'm all for alternatives to too-big-to-fail economic fascism corporate efforts to trade our data while providing a minimally-usable experience with software and protocols so convoluted that no one can possibly compete (except for other enormous subsidized turdbarrel containerships)... A million is way not enough to make a new browser.

Serenity is almost interesting, except C++ is a disaster, and that is enough for me to stay the **** away from. C++ _and_ all the http-related technologies... I would buy puts if I could.

🚀 stack · Jul 04 at 20:59:

And really, what does yet another html browser have to do with gemini? Tesla has about as much in common...

💎 istvan · Jul 04 at 23:28:

If I could find and ban every web-based gemini proxy site from even viewing my capsule I would, but it’s been IP whack a mole.

The Web is not somewhere I want to be anymore, and I don’t want to deal with Web users.

😎 flipperzero · Jul 05 at 05:50:

Again, that's nothing to do with this discussion, and would better suit discourse in a separate post as this ones meant to encourage people to try a new approach to the web standards to make improvements away from the interest of suits which IF achievable would BENEFIT the smallnet from being threatened with similar. No need for derailment.

It's not about how it relates to Gemini, as much it is encouraging an open ecosystem to the web like what's here. If people get a taste of that -there- could push em to drop it for -here-. Dig? Why shoot ourselves in the foot with "Baah, web bad. Web users, unclean.." We were all once web users too lol. You had to find some way here, SOME how.

🚀 stack · Jul 05 at 13:37:

I don't want to be a sourpus, but... For a browser to be even remotely usable, never mind more private or better in any way, you simply have to implement the entire terribleness created by the evil ones, including weird corner cases and nonstandards.. In the process of doing so, you will just give up, or become one of them.

Some ideas are just dumb. If one enjoys doing dumb things (I often do), by all means, enjoy -- especially if someone actually is paying for you! But it will not make the world a better place, usher in a new age, or even become an incremental improvement in anyone's life. A couple of guys will high five each other because a Wikipedia page finally loads.

🚀 stack · Jul 05 at 15:10:

Toxic positivity is a thing.

— https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25803568