I really hope the privacy-conscious people downloading this aren't just downloading these binary blobs and instead compiling it from source. Especially after seeing this disclaimer on their download page:
>>>IMPORTANT: These binaries are provided by anyone who are willing to build and submit them. Because these binaries are not necessarily reproducible, authenticity cannot be guaranteed. For your consideration, each download page lists the GitHub user that submitted those binaries.
Well that's the thing - I'm not willing to build them. I wouldn't know where to start, even. And no ambition to learn, whilst Firefox and uBlock keep going. Seriously why should I? Maybe someone more able than I can share their knowledge with a pointer to a guide that says why this is better than what I have, and how to get it running on my Windows box.
My current position is to step wide and rather carefully around anything by/from Google.
Just use brave. I don't get why people are still trying to split off a new no-Google pro privacy chromium when there is a Very good option already. If people pushed to help brave even better we would be in a very good world
So you say your current position is to be rather carefully around anything by/from Google, but you trust Internet randos to build the binary of the browser you use?
If you don’t use ungoogled-chromium, you’re presumably not downloading and running community-provided non-reproducible binary blobs of ungoogled-chromium, so you don’t need to learn to compile them from source instead. That’s what the comment was about.
Considerably more trustworthy binaries are available for Arch, Debian, and Fedora through OpenSUSE's Open Build Service. Arch binaries are also reproducible.
Chromium security patches usually don't require a full recompile. Usually an incremental build will just take 30 seconds or so. Obviously that still means you need 100GB spare for the working directory.
It's interesting the first release on that page is from 2016 and then the build .zip was 69MB, the last release from yesterday weighs 100MB compared to the official chromium which is 179MB that is alot of google and alot of non-google added in 5 years!
I can't find a list of removed features, but I'm gonna take a wild guess that it includes proprietary codecs. It's the same reason why the chromium binaries in most distro repos are smaller than the official ones, but also useless for normal users that want to experience all content on the net.
I forked the repo with the intention of doing this a couple months ago. The default Windows runner for Actions doesn’t have enough free disk space to compile Chromium (at least, given the build instructions the project provided). Given it took an hour to fail every time, it made trying to optimize hard and I eventually gave up.
GitHub Actions free tier comes with ~34 hours of free compute time with 500MB storage. Pro comes with 50 hours and 1GB. Enterprise comes with much more. Building on Windows or macOS divides those compute rates by 2 and 10 respectively.
For a project with frequent point releases, building Chromium via GitHub might require a monetary commitment.
I've had a horrible experience on PC with early Brave. I'll never install that again. Just understand this, you don't trust Google, fine... Now do you trust some randos telling you you should trust them instead of Google...
How hard is it to compile these days? I recall trying to build several years back for Electron development work on Ubuntu and it was a royal pain in the butt.
Ok, let's say I'm a tech savvy Windows user. Assuming I have something like Visual Studio installed, would this compile correctly off the bat? I doubt it. (I've not tried tbh)
Personal experience, most of the source I download from GitHub either will straight refuse to compile in Visual Studio, or requires me tweaking a lot of the dependencies and stepping through the warnings and errors until it does.
"Ah, but don't use Visual Studio" you say. "Use XYZ-compiler-de-jour". Right, that's now in the 'too-hard/too-time-consuming' bucket, and I'll look for something else.
Pretty easy if you have a reasonably fast PC (>8 cores, ideally HEDT/server), use one of the two popular platforms (Windows or Ubuntu) and don't try to outsmart the build system.
This is the hilarious irony of this entire software project. I trust Google a lot more to produce a safe binary than some random internet stranger who promises to be good. Even if I don't ultimately trust Google as a software vendor, I can at least make some reasonable assumptions about the security of their product.
> I really hope the privacy-conscious people downloading this aren't just downloading these binary blobs and instead compiling it from source.
Those would be on a nix (linux/bsd/other) free source OS with distro specific binaries (or rolling their own and would be better off compiling it themselves anyways)
There is exactly such a PR - https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium/pull/1693 - as you might imagine building a complex binary for many target OSs and flavors within OSs, it's a little complicated and requires some discussion about the right approach. In the mean time, binaries are available.
And for the precisely the same reason, I hope the privacy-conscious people who are compiling it from source aren't downloading their compilers as binary blobs!
And I sure hope they didn't download and install their OS from a premade image too, you really can't trust canonical and the rest of those gangs these days!
The problem with this is updates: there is no trusted publisher of binaries, and even if you pick one person to trust, oftentimes builds are 6 - 8 weeks out of date with Chromium which means you're susceptible to all the published zero-days.
Tried building it myself and it takes 4 hours on my 32-core 5950x, and you still depend on someone actually porting a version bump because their patches need to be regenerated for every new chromium build.
I like the idea of it in principle; if someone donates some CI time and we get official CI builds, plus getting more active with picking up new builds it'll be a real contender. I'll stick with Firefox for now.
Because I previously worked on the Chromium codebase at Google I have a 'specialist' dev workstation, an HP Z840 dual 18 core Xeon with 256GB of RAM. And that's a model from many years ago now, the newer specialist workstations are even heftier. To work on chrome @ Google you absolutely need one.
That said, if you're using cached builds via goma and have a nice fat pipe it can go quite fast without making your machine sweat much.
It's an absolutely massive code base. I wish I could explain why, but it is. No single part sticks out as bloat to me. I could never get CLion (among other tools) to index it properly.
Maybe someone can create a Goma-equivalent for ungoogled chromium, but it's the project's explicit goal to not depend on Google stuff (they actually apply hundreds of patches to the code to remove built-in google service references) so a Google-supplied Goma cache won't be of much use to this project's builds.
>Tried building it myself and it takes 4 hours on my 32-core 5950x,
That seems excessively long? For me it only takes around 2.5 hours on a 8c/16t processor. This is with optimizations enabled, with plenty of free ram and building on SSD.
It's likely it'll be faster if I build on bare-metal on my box; spun up a VM because the build does all kinds of stuff (downloads binaries, spits up temporaries all over the place, etc.).
4 hours on a 32-core modern CPU? If this isn’t the strongest indictment of browsers getting out of control with regards to features and complexity, I don’t know what is.
Browsers are a window into the internet. Browsers should be simple enough to be implemented by a single person in a week.
I want the web to be re-constructed from scratch starting with the TCP/IP stack all the way to gifs with modern hindsight.
"Browsers should be simple enough to be implemented by a single person in a week."
They are. It all depends on who defines what a "browser" is and what it can do.
The browser I use as a "daily driver" is a 1.3M static binary. It is 5.7M of C code, including graphics stuff I do not utilise. It compiles in under a minute on a low-end computer.
This browser allows me to "browse" hypertext. It displays HTML tables beautifully in textmode. I can download files. I can save HTML as formatted text. It supports FTP. The program has various settings for cache size, character set and so forth. I can script the browser using tmux.
This browser is all I really need.^1 I read HTML then decide if I want to download or save something. Simple. What else is there, really. When I want to run programs I do not do that using this browser. I have separate compilers and interpeters for that. When I want to listen to audio or watch video, I do not try to listen or watch using this browser. I have separate programs for that. And so on. I do not try to live inside a single pogram. In every case of a non HTML-reading/saving or www/ftp browsing task, the separate programs do a better job than the browser could. If this sounds something like the "UNIX principle" maybe that is not a coincidence.
Sure, we can take each of those individual programs and integrate them into a single program, and still call it a "browser" but why would anyone want to do that.^2 What is that concept in programming called "separation of concerns". Someone once called it "an ordering of one's thoughts". When people use browsers written by web advertising-supported organisations, then the "organisation of thoughts" is going to revolve around advertising (requisite tracking and personal data/metadata collection) and how to integrate it into the browser. When I use the text-only browser I choose, the ordering of thoughts is quite different. I see no advertising. Ever. I still consume the same amount of "content", maybe even more because this 1.3M browser is quite fast.
1. Major corporations operating on the web today, e.g., banks, can obviously force people to use certain browsers for business and important personal matters. For recreational web use, however, people can choose any browser.
2. The answer is not "For everyone's convenience and free enjoyment." That is why we have people trying to "un-google".
What's surprising to me is that this product not only removes Google services integration, but also adds rather opinionated "Enhancing Features" of its own. Many of these are pretty good, but not everyone will like all of them. I, for example, doesn't like the "Force all pop-ups into tabs" change.
Guix does not distribute Firefox and instead distributes GNU Icecat, which comes with the unremovable libreJS and an extension to make UPS's site work without JavaScript.
The privacy features are why I won't use it. Same with librewolf. I am sick and tired of all of these web breaking alterations being the only independent forks available.
One of these things is not like the others. I really wouldn't put Apple in that group.
The only reason I can think of even putting them in a nearby group is because of App Store restrictions, but you can still sideload your own code, and it doesn't apply to Macs at all.
Gave up on it after it stopped downloading extensions from both the official Microsoft store and the OpenVSX store due to the CORS issue. The fragility of the OpenVSX store was in highlight when their maintainers couldn't make it compatible with the CORS requirement of VSCode for several months. I'm not sure if it's fixed now or if they're still using a workaround.
does vscodium have a way to only display FOSS extensions? I've considered giving it a whirl but I don't really like the idea of it if it ends up just being a trojan horse for closed source extensions
Now this is one I'd use, but I'm already satisfied with Firefox.
Firefox for Android could use some improvements, when I switched from Chrome, the downgraded experience felt almost immediately, but you get used to that to the point you don't notice.
What I love about Firefox on Android: sending pages to my other devices. So when I see an interesting webpage on the subway, I can send it to my office computer and read it later.
Scroll speed is noticeable (it's not as smooth) when you're used to Mobile Chrome, but you get used to it. I don't feel it anymore.
Some UX shortcuts or improvements could have been used as well (e.g. the "Sync" button for the tabs in other devices instead of syncing without asking, or... the weird zoom it does into a form field when I'm about to type in it).
Why bother "de-googling" if you're still eating from Google's hand anyway? You get to support the Chromium/Blink hegemony _and_ the warm fuzzies that you're not sharing your data with Google (because you're technically adept enough to search this out, while supporting the propagation of a technology which disenfranchises non-technical users' privacy).
(I wish someone would do this with Firefox too. I am tired of all the useless or meaningless services being added to Firefox - from pocket to monitor to even ads now.)
Unfortunately, upstream IceCat appears to use the FireFox 60.x ESR branch, which is three branches behind the current ESR and is past its end-of-life date. It's also a few security updates behind the 60.x ESR branch's last release.
The GUIX package is more recent, but its description states:
> WARNING: IceCat 91 has not yet been released by the upstream IceCat project. This is a preview release, and does not currently meet the privacy-respecting standards of the IceCat project.
>(I wish someone would do this with Firefox too. I am tired of all the useless or meaningless services being added to Firefox - from pocket to monitor to even ads now.)
Is that really needed considering that about:config flags fixes all/most of the issues?
Once upon a time, I used icecat, based on the conclusion that it was basically just firefox but with all the settings pre-set to what I would have had to manually set them to. A soft fork, or repackaging, of firefox that just tunes about:config values to somewhat more conservative presets would be lovely.
> about:config flags fixes all/most of the issues?
How do I even keep track of all this? What if my personal data has been uploaded to some service that I am not even aware is running in the background.
I'd like all that unnecessary code stripped from the browser. (It's like we are going backwards - we seem to have removed browser plugins in favour of bundling everything into a big bloat of a browser ... yeah, I know some of these are "special" firefox addons. The only thing that makes them "special" is that they are bundled into the browser by Mozilla, do not show up in the addons / extension page and cannot be removed like other user-installed addons.).
Mozilla can remotely kill extensions which means that privacy enabling features of firefox that are served as extensions like the containers feature can suddenly and without warning stop working.
No amount of config flag fudging will fix that glaring design choice.
Readit News
>>>IMPORTANT: These binaries are provided by anyone who are willing to build and submit them. Because these binaries are not necessarily reproducible, authenticity cannot be guaranteed. For your consideration, each download page lists the GitHub user that submitted those binaries.
My current position is to step wide and rather carefully around anything by/from Google.
Okay.
/nerdsnipe
https://build.opensuse.org/project/show/home:ungoogled_chrom...
https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium/discussions/14...
https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium-arc...
Worth it until the next "update", I think.
For a project with frequent point releases, building Chromium via GitHub might require a monetary commitment.
[1] https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.github.Eloston.Ungoogle...
Here is the most recent build logs for x86_64 https://flathub.org/builds/#/builders/12/builds/8123 which I found from the GitHub green-tick status icon on the latest commit on https://github.com/flathub/com.github.Eloston.UngoogledChrom....
Personal experience, most of the source I download from GitHub either will straight refuse to compile in Visual Studio, or requires me tweaking a lot of the dependencies and stepping through the warnings and errors until it does.
"Ah, but don't use Visual Studio" you say. "Use XYZ-compiler-de-jour". Right, that's now in the 'too-hard/too-time-consuming' bucket, and I'll look for something else.
Those would be on a nix (linux/bsd/other) free source OS with distro specific binaries (or rolling their own and would be better off compiling it themselves anyways)
https://bootstrappable.org/
I don’t think this is true for macOS? the builds seem automated…
Tried building it myself and it takes 4 hours on my 32-core 5950x, and you still depend on someone actually porting a version bump because their patches need to be regenerated for every new chromium build.
I like the idea of it in principle; if someone donates some CI time and we get official CI builds, plus getting more active with picking up new builds it'll be a real contender. I'll stick with Firefox for now.
That said, if you're using cached builds via goma and have a nice fat pipe it can go quite fast without making your machine sweat much.
It's an absolutely massive code base. I wish I could explain why, but it is. No single part sticks out as bloat to me. I could never get CLion (among other tools) to index it properly.
Dead Comment
damn, that's twice as many cores as a regular 5950x
Threads, vCores, etc. ... used to working in VMs not bare metal; but you got the point.
That seems excessively long? For me it only takes around 2.5 hours on a 8c/16t processor. This is with optimizations enabled, with plenty of free ram and building on SSD.
It's likely it'll be faster if I build on bare-metal on my box; spun up a VM because the build does all kinds of stuff (downloads binaries, spits up temporaries all over the place, etc.).
Browsers are a window into the internet. Browsers should be simple enough to be implemented by a single person in a week.
I want the web to be re-constructed from scratch starting with the TCP/IP stack all the way to gifs with modern hindsight.
They are. It all depends on who defines what a "browser" is and what it can do.
The browser I use as a "daily driver" is a 1.3M static binary. It is 5.7M of C code, including graphics stuff I do not utilise. It compiles in under a minute on a low-end computer.
This browser allows me to "browse" hypertext. It displays HTML tables beautifully in textmode. I can download files. I can save HTML as formatted text. It supports FTP. The program has various settings for cache size, character set and so forth. I can script the browser using tmux.
This browser is all I really need.^1 I read HTML then decide if I want to download or save something. Simple. What else is there, really. When I want to run programs I do not do that using this browser. I have separate compilers and interpeters for that. When I want to listen to audio or watch video, I do not try to listen or watch using this browser. I have separate programs for that. And so on. I do not try to live inside a single pogram. In every case of a non HTML-reading/saving or www/ftp browsing task, the separate programs do a better job than the browser could. If this sounds something like the "UNIX principle" maybe that is not a coincidence.
Sure, we can take each of those individual programs and integrate them into a single program, and still call it a "browser" but why would anyone want to do that.^2 What is that concept in programming called "separation of concerns". Someone once called it "an ordering of one's thoughts". When people use browsers written by web advertising-supported organisations, then the "organisation of thoughts" is going to revolve around advertising (requisite tracking and personal data/metadata collection) and how to integrate it into the browser. When I use the text-only browser I choose, the ordering of thoughts is quite different. I see no advertising. Ever. I still consume the same amount of "content", maybe even more because this 1.3M browser is quite fast.
1. Major corporations operating on the web today, e.g., banks, can obviously force people to use certain browsers for business and important personal matters. For recreational web use, however, people can choose any browser.
2. The answer is not "For everyone's convenience and free enjoyment." That is why we have people trying to "un-google".
For something less radical, Gemini
https://ungoogled-software.github.io/features/
Guix does not distribute Firefox and instead distributes GNU Icecat, which comes with the unremovable libreJS and an extension to make UPS's site work without JavaScript.
https://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/
Uhh... thanks
It is ironically hosted for free on Microsoft's popular git hosting website.
It's easy, just don't use Google, Microsoft and Apple stuff.
The only reason I can think of even putting them in a nearby group is because of App Store restrictions, but you can still sideload your own code, and it doesn't apply to Macs at all.
Firefox for Android could use some improvements, when I switched from Chrome, the downgraded experience felt almost immediately, but you get used to that to the point you don't notice.
Some UX shortcuts or improvements could have been used as well (e.g. the "Sync" button for the tabs in other devices instead of syncing without asking, or... the weird zoom it does into a form field when I'm about to type in it).
(I wish someone would do this with Firefox too. I am tired of all the useless or meaningless services being added to Firefox - from pocket to monitor to even ads now.)
https://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/
It seems it is mostly maintained within GNU Guix now (which has 91.3.0).
[^]: It comes with its own set of opinionated (but privacy-friendly) add-ons.
The GUIX package is more recent, but its description states:
> WARNING: IceCat 91 has not yet been released by the upstream IceCat project. This is a preview release, and does not currently meet the privacy-respecting standards of the IceCat project.
Is that really needed considering that about:config flags fixes all/most of the issues?
How do I even keep track of all this? What if my personal data has been uploaded to some service that I am not even aware is running in the background.
I'd like all that unnecessary code stripped from the browser. (It's like we are going backwards - we seem to have removed browser plugins in favour of bundling everything into a big bloat of a browser ... yeah, I know some of these are "special" firefox addons. The only thing that makes them "special" is that they are bundled into the browser by Mozilla, do not show up in the addons / extension page and cannot be removed like other user-installed addons.).
No amount of config flag fudging will fix that glaring design choice.
And make no mistake, it's a choice, not an error.
Been using it on my work machine for a few months and I'm quite happy with it
plus
takes care of pretty much all of the firefox bloat for meDead Comment