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by KingOfCoders 703 days ago
30+ years Firefox user, eager for Ladybird to be usable on Windows.
4 comments

Won't happen anytime soon : " Will Ladybird work on Windows? 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. "

Targeting the smallest market first seems like a good recipe for a project to die early
The Linux ecosystem is by far the largest market for enthusiasts volunteering their time to develop a new browser. It makes sense this community would only care about building a browser for their own needs (Linux support only).

Additionally and unlike Mozilla, this volunteer community is also very unlikely to care about non-enthusiasts who may complain the browser doesn't support Encrypted Media Extensions (EME), Web Environment Integrity (WEI) or whatever anti-features ad-tech companies are trying to force onto mainstream users. This volunteer community is also unlikely to care too much about whether web sites containing 10MB of obfuscated JavaScript that was developed and tested solely against Chromium-based browsers works well. I think you'd find that the community would rather spend time working on projects such as yt-dlp to just re-implement front-ends for horribly broken websites, or would simply prefer to use non-broken alternative websites.

Linux is also the easiest kernel to develop against too for reasons that include _much_ better sandboxing features being available, better debugging tools and availability of source code to learn from and debug with. Contrast to Windows with undocumented or poorly documented kernel and other system library APIs, lack of source code (particularly examples of APIs being used in other software), and having to do more work to opt-in to security features that are enabled by default on a Linux system.

"smallest market" is relative, the Linux market for suckless tools for example is likely 10x bigger than the Windows one. For privacy focused alternative browsers I'd say its somewhere close to 50/50.
Also, UNIX like system includes Mac, yeah?
And WSL.
Yes
it's not a commercial product
Which is not the point. If you want to have success you need to copy the Blender/Godot model. Year by year they make great versions for all platforms, and they do well. A new browser should support both and rally the people to work on it, again like the Blender Foundation has done.
They already had success by their definition: having a fun project and learning stuff while working on it. Not everyone is a greedy capitalist
Of course thats a great metric, but to better exemplify, taking Blender again, with their pool of money (mostly donated by enthusiasts) they could really accelerate the development, hiring the best contributors on a case by case basis, which solidified the code base and continuity. What I am saying is there is a great middle ground, with a good team, where money and enthusiasm go hand in hand.
I'm sure this will change.

Or I need PowerPoint and Affinity on Linux.

I have Affinity on Unix environment (macOS). You can probably use PowerPoint there as well.
After 20+ years I stopped owning Apple (Quadra, G4 Cube (favorite one), MacBooks, iMac Pro), no plan to go back to a golden cage.
How about dual-booting or virtual machines? Wonder if WSL supports GUIs?
> Wonder if WSL supports GUIs?

Yes, it's called WSLg. Uses Wayland, so many apps are a bit messed up. I think there's a way to install X11. Last time I tried it over a year ago it was a bit rough.

Using WSL.

Tried dual boot for some time, found it too cumbersome.

If you're using Windows, you have far bigger problems to worry about than this.
30 years? Pretty sure the options were Netscape and Mosaic.
Yes, Mosaic (VAX, Sun), Netscape (Dec Alpha), Firefox (Linux, OSX, Windows).
Firefox was released 20 years ago, in 2004.

30 years ago in 1994 you could have been using Linux (v0.99/1.0/1.1), Apple System 7 (not OSX), and Windows (3.2) - but not with Firefox.

You might have used Lynx or NCSA Mosaic, or by the end of 1994 Mosaic Netscape (later Netscape Navigator) or beta Opera.

I think they were listing the lineage of browsers they used, starting from the earliest one to current one. Not that they were using Firefox 30 years ago.
Draw a trend line through Windows releases and it doesn't look good. I can't see myself upgrading to 11 any time soon and I'm seriously considering just switching to Linux. It's all I've used on work laptops since 2013 and it's just fine.

I still despise Gtk 3 or whatever it is that is killing menus and sticking controls into the title bar etc. but it's fine. You don't need to use Gtk apps much these days anyway.

KDE is nice this time of year
Well, they just released a new major version so maybe a bit clouded with chance of thunderstorms right now.